The Hague Local Division (single judge) granted provisional measures for the UPC territory and Switzerland against a US manufacturer and its Dutch-domiciled online retailer. The Court took jurisdiction over the US defendant because its website directed European customers to third-party retailers through which test purchases were delivered, and extended the Swiss part of the claim against it through the Dutch anchor defendant on the risk of irreconcilable decisions. Urgency was met because the patentee has no general duty to monitor the market and time runs from actual knowledge. On the merits, the Court construed the purpose-limited use claim at the priority date (unaffected by a later taxonomic reclassification of the claimed organism, and not limited to the strain of an example), held that the claimed organism need only contribute meaningfully to the effect rather than achieve it alone, treated the TBA-upheld patent as presumptively valid, and found infringement more likely than not on the defendants' own marketing statements. Information on quantities was ordered at the provisional stage and the defendants' request for security for enforcement was refused.

The Munich Local Division decided an infringement action and a counterclaim for revocation on a unitary patent for a rapid-entry shoe. On claim construction it held that the binding nature of the claim under Art. 69(1) EPC bars reading an unwritten limiting feature into the claim where description and drawings give no clear indication of it, and that the Court is not bound by the parties' constructions because construction is a matter of law. Claim 1 as granted was anticipated, but the patent was maintained as limited by an auxiliary request: the added-matter and sufficiency attacks failed, and the inventive-step attacks failed because the counterclaimants did not plead a pointer or motivation from any starting point, which in light of Arts. 42, 54 and 76(2) UPCA the Court will not supply itself. Only one of four accused models infringed; for the others the functional feature was not shown under the practical forces of foot entry. The Court ordered injunction, information with supporting invoices, corrective measures and damages liability, made the corrective measures enforceable only against a EUR 5m security because of the limitation, the pending EPO opposition and the mixed infringement result, refused provisional damages and publication, and ordered each party to bear its own costs.

Like Panel 1 of the Düsseldorf Local Division in its most recent decision (UPC_CFI_807/2024, decision of 27 May 2026, headnote 1 and para. 240 – Wonderland v Cybex), Panel 2 of the Düsseldorf Local Division also applies the assessment criteria for equivalence under patent law established by the The Hague Local Division. Das Panel 2 der Lokalkammer Düsseldorf wendet ebenso wie zuletzt auch das Panel 1 der Lokalkammer Düsseldorf (UPC_CFI_807/2024, Entscheidung vom 27. Mai 2026, Leitsatz 1 und Rn. 240 – Wonderland v. Cybex) die von der Lokalkammer Den Haag festgelegten Beurteilungskriterien für die patentrechtliche Äquivalenz an.

Panel 2 of the Düsseldorf Local Division dismissed both an infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation, because the claim term 'directly closing check valves' (direkt schließende Rückschlagventile) excludes spring-loaded valves. Reading the claim with the description, which distinguishes spring-loaded valves and defines the claimed mechanism as closing by gravity and/or medium, the Court held that any spring contributing to closure takes a valve outside the claim, so the prosecution history could be left open. For equivalence, Panel 2 expressly adopted the four-question test of the Hague Local Division, as Panel 1 had done in Wonderland v Cybex, and found the first (same function) and third (legal certainty) questions not met where the patent itself excludes the variant. On validity, sufficiency requires only one way to carry out the invention, and the inventive-step attacks fell with the rejected broad construction. Costs followed the outcome of each action.

1. A manufacturing method of a publicly used product is made available to the public by use pursuant to Art. 54(2) EPC if, at the relevant date, the person skilled in the art could establish the method without undue burden by analysing the product’s composition. There is no support in the EPC for an additional requirement that the skilled person would need particular reasons for analysing the product. 2. Where a publicly available product discloses information which is relevant to the novelty of a claimed manufacturing method, the disclosure must be such that the skilled person can use the claimed method on the basis of their common general knowledge. Reproducibility of features which are not part of the claimed invention is not required.

The Court of Appeal held that a manufacturing method is made available to the public by prior use of a product if the skilled person could establish the method without undue burden by analysing the product, with no additional requirement that the skilled person have a particular reason to analyse it; reproducibility is required only for the claimed features, not for others such as ink quantities. Applying this, Gucci's own earlier 'Flora' leather products anticipated Agfa's leather-decorating method claim, because standard analytical techniques (GC/MS, IR, Raman) revealed the use of pigmented UV-curable inkjet inks; expert evidence produced without the defendant's internal knowledge carried more weight than analyses guided by it. The Court corrected the Hamburg LD's construction: 'achromatic colour' is a broad concept read with the description and common general knowledge, covering off-white base coats containing some chromatic pigment, and an amendment during examination did not exclude that. Following Fujifilm v Kodak, dependent claims were examined individually; claim 5 (summed polyfunctional monomer and oligomer content) and claim 9 survived, others were anticipated or obvious. The infringement appeal failed because infringement of claim 5 was not proven and neither R. 172 RoP nor Art. 55 UPCA shifted the burden of proof.

1-Defendant 3 is the shareholder of Defendants 2, 4 and 5. However, there is no evidence of its active, operational involvement or knowledge, in relation to the infringing acts committed by these three Defendants. 2-The Claimant intends to limit the injunction to patients whose treatment has not yet begun or to treatments that have been interrupted for any reason (Reply to SoD, para 6.24). The Claimant does not intend to seek an injunction in respect of ongoing treatments which do not, in the future, include a Torque Ridge feature. Furthermore, Defendants’ infringing products are not the only ones available on the market and do not represent an improvement on existing treatment methods. The Claimant has furthermore acknowledged that appliances already delivered to patients are not subject to corrective measures. Taking into account these considerations, the corrective measures requested by the Claimant are proportionate.

The Paris Local Division upheld a unitary patent on orthodontic clear aligners against attacks for insufficiency, added matter (intermediate generalisation) and lack of inventive step, applying the Court of Appeal's frameworks from NanoString, Amgen v Sanofi, Meril v Edwards and Abbott v Sibio. Construing the claim with the patent as its own lexicon, it read 'buccal' as 'facial', covering anterior as well as posterior teeth, which decided literal infringement. Liability in the UPC territory was imposed on the operating group companies but refused for the pure holding company, and the UK claims were dismissed because the claimant had not substantiated UK law in its statement of claim. The Court ordered a permanent injunction, recall, removal, destruction and information under Art. 67 UPCA, awarded damages only from grant because no compensation for the provisional-protection period had been requested or evidenced, refused publication of the decision and refused security for enforcement.

1. The party alleging added matter must identify, by means of a specific comparison, the subject-matter of the original disclosure that is said to have been extended in the later application or divisional patent. The mere fact that the original application contains numerous embodiments and theoretically allows a very large number of combinations does not establish added matter. Although this may raise issues of clarity or drafting technique, an extension of subject-matter arises only where the granted claim conveys technical information that the skilled person could not derive directly and unambiguously from the application as filed, contrary to Articles 123(2) and 138(1)(c) EPC. Procedural fairness under recital 5 of the Preamble to the RoP requires each party to plead its grounds of challenge clearly and with sufficient specificity. The Court can neither cure deficiencies in those grounds nor supplement them of its own motion, since doing so would substitute the Court for the challenging party and compromise its impartiality. 2. Where the alleged contribution to the art lies in the identification of a physiologically or pathologically distinct patient subgroup, the patent must provide sufficient technical information to identify that subgroup and to make it credible that the medicinal product is suitable for the claimed therapeutic use in that subgroup. In that context, the precise therapeutic dosage need not be stated in the independent claim, provided that the skilled person, on the basis of the patent, the prior art and common general knowledge, can select a safe and effective dose without undue burden in the exercise of their routine competence. 3. An inventive-step objection cannot be sustained by reconstructing the claimed solution with knowledge of the patent. Where an obviousness attack can be constructed only by selecting and combining numerous (more than 10) disclosures addressing different technical questions, none of which supplies the missing pointer or gives the skilled person a reason to consult the others, the resulting mosaic is indicative of an ex post facto analysis rather than the course the skilled person would have followed at the effective date.

The Milan Central Division dismissed a generic company's revocation action against a second-medical-use patent defined by a patient subgroup, maintaining it in a form the proprietor had unconditionally limited to match its amendment before the EPO Opposition Division. Late-filed prior art and new attacks introduced in the rejoinder, partly drawn from the EPO's preliminary opinion, were excluded under the front-loaded procedure, and the Court held that an EPO Board of Appeal decision on a parent patent has no res judicata effect before the UPC. It held that a generic added-matter attack resting on the number of combinations in the parent application was insufficiently substantiated (while examining it anyway), that the patent was sufficiently disclosed although claim 1 recites no dose and the trials excluded some patients, and that a patient subgroup confers novelty under Art. 54(5) EPC where its defining characteristics are functionally linked to an improved therapeutic effect. Inventive step was upheld because no realistic starting point, alone or combined with over ten further documents, pointed to selecting the subgroup with a reasonable expectation of success; such a mosaic indicates hindsight.

1) Ein absolutes Verfahrenshindernis im Sinne der R. 362 VerfO ist ein Umstand, der die Durchführung oder Fortsetzung eines Verfahrens (vor dem Gericht) aus Rechtsgründen ausschließt, und zwar endgültig. Ein absolutes Verfahrenshindernis steht nicht zur Disposition der Parteien und kann auch nicht durch Nachreichung eines Schriftsatzes oder Nachholung beseitig oder geheilt werden. 2) Für die Bestimmung der Rechtskraft einer Entscheidung eines nationalen Gerichts ist das nationale Recht maßgeblich. 3) Ein substantiiertes („konkretes“, „specifically“, „spécifiquement“) Bestreiten gemäß R. 171.2 VerfO kann nicht verlangt werden, wenn es sich bei der vorgebrachten Tatsache um eine solche handelt, die außerhalb des Wahrnehmungs- und Verantwortungsbereichs der Partei liegt. Liegt die vorgebrachte Tatsache außerhalb des Wahrnehmungs- und Verantwortungsbereichs der Partei, ist es ihr möglich, sich mit Nichtwissen zu dieser Tatsache zu erklären. Die Tatsache gilt dann nicht als unstreitig, sie ist vielmehr beweisbedürftig. 4) Ist die Benutzung der technischen Lehre eines Patents aufgrund eines Vorbenutzungsrechts in einem Vertragsmitgliedstaat rechtmäßig, können die Handlungen in diesem Vertragsmitgliedstaat keine Begehungsgefahr hinsichtlich der Patentbenutzung in einem anderen Vertragsmitgliedstaat begründen. Die Begehungsgefahr erfordert die Feststellung einer rechtswidrigen Benutzung des Patents.

The Court of Appeal settled how a final national revocation judgment binds the Court. The res judicata of such a judgment is an absolute procedural bar under R. 362 RoP, the word absolute qualifying the bar rather than the effect of the judgment, and the bar leaves the Court no discretion to continue. Which effects that judgment has is determined by the national law of the state in which it was given, reached through the recognition rule of Brussels Ia and, in the alternative, through Art. 24(1)(e) UPCA. Applying German law, each ground in Art. 138(1) EPC is a separate cause of action and the grounds collected in Art. 138(1)(a) EPC form one, so the counterclaim was barred as to lack of patentability and admissible as to insufficiency. The Court also held that a party may declare ignorance of a fact lying outside its own sphere of perception and responsibility, so that R. 171.2 RoP does not deem the fact admitted but leaves it to be proved, and that lawful use under a prior-use right in one contracting member state can never found a threat of infringement in another, because a threat presupposes unlawful use.

HEADNOTES: The Court considers that, in the specific circumstances of the present case, the new defence arguments submitted by the respondents for the first time in their last written submission concerning the interpretation and infringement of feature 1.6 are admissible. For the purpose of assessing the admissibility of the new arguments raised by the respondents with regard to the interpretation and infringement of feature 1.6, the following considerations are relevant. First, it should be emphasised that claim construction is a matter of law, on which the Court may therefore also elaborate ex officio. The classification of this issue as a matter of law also entails that, had this Court held the respondents’ new submissions on this point to be inadmissible at first instance, the Court of Appeal could, in all likelihood and in full compliance with the adversarial principle, have taken those same arguments into consideration, with the practical consequence that one level of jurisdiction on a substantive issue in the present dispute would have been lost (for such a case, specifically related to non-infringement arguments, see UPC CoA no. 36/2026, order of 8 July 2026, para. 158 et seq.). At the same time, it is essential and indispensable that the opposing party is always given the opportunity to be heard, in accordance with the adversarial principle and the right of defence. The respondents introduced this new argument in their last written submission, filed one month before the oral hearing, without relying on any additional factual element or document that had not been on the case file from the outset of the proceedings. Against that procedural background, significance must also be attached to the applicant’s conduct, since the applicant merely objected to the late filing, without requesting, even in the alternative or as a subsidiary request, the grant of a short time limit to file a reply confined to that specific issue. During the oral hearing, the applicant was in fact given an adequate opportunity to respond to that specific argument, both as regards the interpretation of the claim and as regards infringement of the patent. All the foregoing considerations must be assessed in the specific context of proceedings for provisional measures, where there is considerable time pressure and the parties are required to organise their arguments within very short time limits. A different conclusion would amount to an overly rigid application of the front-loaded character of UPC proceedings, at least in the specific context of proceedings for provisional measures, with an excessive and in any event disproportionate impairment of the effectiveness of the right of defence.

The Milan Local Division granted a UPC-wide preliminary injunction over a continuous glucose monitoring system, holding it more likely than not that the patent is valid and literally infringed. It first admitted the respondents' new claim-construction and non-infringement arguments filed one month before the hearing: claim construction is a matter of law the Court may address ex officio, refusing the arguments would risk losing an instance because the Court of Appeal could take them up, and in provisional-measures proceedings a rigid application of front-loading would disproportionately impair the right of defence. On construction it adopted a balanced approach — functional claim wording read in the light of the disclosed embodiment but not confined to its structural detail — and rejected a limitation to a movable inner housing that was inferable only from the shading of a drawing and named nowhere in the description. All three validity attacks failed at the prima facie standard, the insufficiency case being undermined by the respondents' own inventive-step case that a workable alternative to the disclosed mechanism was obvious, and the inventive-step attack failing because the chosen starting point taught away from adding a complex inserter. The EU authorised representative under Art. 11 MDR was held to be an infringer within Art. 25 and 63 UPCA. The balance of interests favoured the applicant because of price erosion in tender-based and insurance-based reimbursement segments, and the interim costs award was moderated to 30% of the ceiling because the respondents had honoured an undertaking to give two months' notice before market entry.

1. The requirement in Art. 138(1)(e) of the European Patent Convention that a European patent may be revoked if the proprietor is not entitled under Art. 60(1) should be interpreted as meaning that the proprietor does not have any rights to the patent. The burden of presentation and proof for facts establishing that the proprietor is not entitled lies with the claimant. It is therefore not sufficient for this ground of revocation to be successful that a claimant demonstrates that it has rights to parts of the subject-matter disclosed in a patent, e.g. as a co-inventor or the co-inventor’s successor in title. 2. Dependent claims are part of the patent and may be used as fall-back positions in revocation actions. At least in a stand-alone revocation action, where no infringement claim has been brought and it is therefore not yet clear which claims a patent holder may decide to rely on for what purpose, a claimant therefore may have a legitimate interest in having the validity of dependent claims assessed, even if the independent claim is deemed valid. Although the Court is not generally required to take a decision regarding dependent claims in such a situation, it should at least have the discretion to do so if considered appropriate based on the circumstances of the case.

The Munich Central Division answered two questions that had not been settled. First, the entitlement ground in Art. 138(1)(e) EPC requires that the proprietor has no rights at all to the patent: a claimant that shows only rights to parts of the disclosed subject matter, as a co-inventor or a co-inventor's successor, does not make the ground succeed, and the burden of presentation and proof lies on it. Whether an unrelated third party may raise the ground at all was left open, because it suffices for invoking it that the claimant's own entitlement case is not prima facie implausible on a cursory review. On the facts the evidence pointed to the registered inventor being at least a co-inventor, so the ground failed. Second, although the Court of Appeal has held that dependent claims need not be decided where a counterclaim fails against the independent claim, dependent claims are part of the patent and may serve as fall-back positions; in a stand-alone revocation action, where no infringement claim shows which claims the proprietor will rely on, the claimant may have a legitimate interest in their assessment and the Court has a discretion to give it. Exercising that discretion, the Court found claims 21 and 22 insufficiently disclosed because they contradict claim 19, and maintained the patent under an auxiliary request deleting them.

Für eine unmittelbare Verletzung eines Erzeugnisanspruchs ist entscheidend, ob die angegriffene Ausführungsform aufgrund ihrer Beschaffenheit und ihrer Verwendungstauglichkeit objektiv in der Lage ist, die Merkmale des Patentanspruchs zu erfüllen. When determining whether a product claim has been directly infringed, the decisive factor is whether the challenged embodiment is objectively capable of fulfilling the features of the patent claim, given its nature and suitability for use.

The Düsseldorf Local Division found direct literal infringement of a product claim to a rotary osteotome and dismissed the revocation counterclaim in full. Its headnote states the test for direct infringement of a product claim: what matters is whether the challenged embodiment is objectively capable, by its nature and its suitability for use, of fulfilling the features of the claim. The defendants' argument that their burs are only ever rotated in the direction in which the alleged cutting faces trail therefore failed, since nothing prevented rotation in the other direction and their own brochure warned that reverse rotation produces high cutting performance. On the pleading standard, the Court held that once the claimant has substantiated infringement with a detailed party expert report, a broad denial does not put the allegation in issue; the defendants had to answer with comparable detail, if necessary with an expert report of their own. Standing was established under Art. 47(2) UPCA through a chain of exclusive licence and sublicence, whose validity despite identical signatories on both sides was governed by Michigan law and unrebutted. On validity, prior art recommending a rake angle of about 0° was held to point away from making that angle negative, so the person skilled in the art would not, rather than merely could not, arrive at the claim.

I. Erkennt die Fachperson aufgrund ihrer eigenen Fachkunde, dass sie eine Lösung auf einem anderen technischen Gebiet finden kann oder sich das zu lösende Problem in einem sachlich naheliegenden Gebiet in ähnlicher Weise stellt, ist davon auszugehen, dass sie Experten oder Fachleute auf diesem technischen Gebiet hinzuzieht oder entsprechende Erkundigungen einholt. II. Die Aufnahme eines bestimmten Herstellungsverfahrens in einen Erzeugnisanspruch ändert nichts daran, dass es sich um einen Erzeugnisanspruch handelt. Die Aufnahme des Herstellungsverfahrens in den Patentanspruch dient lediglich der mittelbaren näheren Beschreibung des Erzeugnisses. Es ist deshalb zu prüfen, ob sich das angegebene Herstellungsverfahren mittelbar in besonderen Eigenschaften des Erzeugnisses niederschlägt. Können diese besonderen Eigenschaften allerdings nur im Wege des angegebenen Herstellungsverfahrens erreicht werden, ist das Patent im Ergebnis auf durch das Herstellungsverfahren hervorgebrachte Erzeugnisse beschränkt. Körperliche und funktionale Eigenschaften des Erzeugnisses, die sich aus der Anwendung des Verfahrens ergeben, gehören zu den Sachmerkmalen des beanspruchten Erzeugnisses. Ob es solche gibt und welche das sind, ist durch Auslegung des Patentanspruchs zu ermitteln. Maßgeblich ist dabei, wie die Angaben zum Herstellungsweg aus fachlicher Sicht zu verstehen sind und welche Schlussfolgerungen die angesprochene Fachperson hieraus im Hinblick auf die Beschaffenheit der auf diesem Wege herstellbaren Sache zieht. III. Enthält ein Patentanspruch keine ausdrückliche Festlegung hinsichtlich der Reihenfolge der Verfahrensschritte, spricht dies grundsätzlich dafür, dass die im Patentanspruch gewählte Reihenfolge nicht zwingend ist. IV. Ein allgemeiner Begriff offenbart nicht ohne Weiteres sämtliche unter ihn fallende, aber nicht explizit genannten spezifischen Begriffe. Auch wenn hierfür eine ausdrückliche Nennung nicht erforderlich ist, kann in den Offenbarungsgehalt einer Vorveröffentlichung nur das mit einbezogen werden, was die Fachperson bei aufmerksamer Lektüre ohne weiteres erkennt und als selbstverständlich mitliest. V. Die Zuständigkeit des EPG setzt nicht voraus, dass in der Sache das EPGÜ zur Anwendung kommt. Von der Frage der Zuständigkeit zu trennen ist die Frage der temporalen Anwendbarkeit des materiellen Rechts (EPG-Berufungsgericht, 2. Juni 2025, UPC-CoA-156/2025, XSYS/ESKO, Rn. 34; vgl. EuGH, 5. September 2019, C-172/18, AMS Neve/ Heritage u.a. ECLI:EU:C:2019:674, Rn. 63 f.). Dies folgt schon daraus, dass das Gericht aus Gründen der Rechtssicherheit in der Lage sein muss, anhand der Normen des EPGÜ und der Brüssel Ia-VO (Verordnung (EU) Nr. 1215/2012 des Europäischen Parlaments und des Rates vom 12. Dezember 2012 über die gerichtliche Zuständigkeit und die Anerkennung und Vollstreckung von Entscheidungen in Zivil- und Handelssachen) zu entscheiden, ob es zuständig ist, ohne in eine Sachprüfung eintreten zu müssen (vgl. EuGH, 16. März 1999, C-159/97, Trasporti Castelletti Spedizioni Internazionali SpA/Hugo Trumpy SpA, EuZW 1999, 441, Rn. 8). VI. Das EPGÜ enthält insbesondere mit Art. 63, 64, 67, 68 und 72 materiell-rechtliche Normen (vgl. EPG-Berufungsgericht, 16. Januar 2025, UPC_CoA_30/2024, Fives/Reel Rn. 66). Da es keinen Gleichlauf zwischen Zuständigkeit und anwendbarem materiellem Recht gibt, folgt aus der Zuständigkeit des EPG nicht, dass diese Normen auch auf Sachverhalte vor dem 1. Juni 2023 Anwendung finden. Es besteht kein Erfordernis, zu gewährleisten, dass Vorschriften nur einer Rechtsordnung anwendbar sind (EuGH, AMS Neve/ Heritage u.a. ECLI:EU:C:2019:674, Rn. 64). VII. Während bei Verfahrensvorschriften im Allgemeinen davon auszugehen ist, dass sie ab dem Datum ihres Inkrafttretens Anwendung finden, sind Vorschriften des materiellen Rechts im Interesse der Beachtung der Grundsätze der Rechtssicherheit und des Vertrauensschutzes so auszulegen, dass sie für vor ihrem Inkrafttreten abgeschlossene Sachverhalte nur gelten, soweit aus ihrem Wortlaut, ihrer Zielsetzung oder ihrem Aufbau eindeutig hervorgeht, dass ihnen eine solche Wirkung beizumessen ist. Aus Gründen des Vertrauensschutzes sind neue Rechtsnormen grundsätzlich nicht auf dem unter dem alten Recht entstandene und endgültig erworbene Rechtspositionen anwendbar, finden jedoch auf künftige Wirkungen eines unter dem alten Recht entstandenen Sachverhalts sowie auf neue Rechtspositionen Anwendung. Etwas anderes gilt nur – und vorbehaltlich des Verbots der Rückwirkung von Rechtsakten –, wenn zusammen mit der neuen Rechtsnorm besondere Vorschriften erlassen werden, die speziell die Voraussetzungen für ihre zeitliche Geltung regeln. Dieses aufgrund allgemeinen Völkergewohnheitsrecht anerkannte und auch aus Art. 28 WÜRV folgende Rückwirkungsverbot ist auch bei der Auslegung des EPGÜ zu beachten (vgl. EPG-Berufungsgericht, 2. Juni 2025, UPC-CoA-156/2025, XSYS/ESKO, Rn. 35; EuGH, 22. Juni 2022, C-267/20, ECLI:EU:C:2022:494, Volvo u.a./RM, Rn. 31-32). VIII. Das EPGÜ enthält keine Bestimmungen, die die Voraussetzungen für die zeitliche Geltung auf abgeschlossene Sachverhalte ausdrücklich regeln. Insbesondere Art. 3 EPGÜ enthält keine solche Regelung (EPG-Berufungsgericht, 2. Juni 2025, UPC-CoA-156/2025, XSYS/ESKO, Rn. 27). Art. 3c) EPGÜ legt zwar ohne Einschränkung fest, dass das Übereinkommen unbeschadet des Art. 83 EPGÜ für alle europäischen Patente, die zum Zeitpunkt des Inkrafttretens dieses Übereinkommens noch nicht erloschen sind oder die nach diesem Zeitpunkt erteilt worden sind, gilt. Entsprechendes gilt gemäß Art. 3 d) EPGÜ für europäische Patentanmeldungen. Eine ausdrückliche Regelung, wie mit bereits abgeschlossenen Sachverhalten zu verfahren ist, lässt sich der Regelung nicht entnehmen. Auch Art. 24 EPGÜ enthält keine ausdrückliche Regelung hinsichtlich der zeitlichen Geltung bereits abgeschlossener Sachverhalte. Das bedeutet, dass auf vor dem 1. Juni 2023 abgeschlossene Sachverhalte hinsichtlich europäischer Bündelpatente das nationale materielles Recht Anwendung findet, welches gemäß Art. 24 Abs. 2 a) EPGÜ i.V. mit Art. 8 Abs. 1 der Verordnung (EG) 864/2007 (Rom II-VO) zu bestimmen ist. Ein abgeschlossener Sachverhalt liegt vor, wenn eine Rechtsposition entstanden ist. Bei Unterlassungsansprüchen ist der Sachverhalt erst mit endgültiger und ernsthafter Beendigung der Zuwiderhandlung abgeschlossen, weil jede drohende oder tatsächliche Zuwiderhandlung jeweils einen neuen Anspruch auf Untersagung begründet, der auch in die Zukunft wirkt. Das bedeutet, dass wenn der Patentverletzer die verletzenden Handlungen vor dem 1. Juni 2023 nicht endgültig und ernsthaft eingestellt hat, das Rückwirkungsverbot einer Anwendung des Art. 63 EPGÜ (endgültige Verfügungen) nicht entgegensteht. IX. Entsprechendes gilt für Abhilfemaßnahmen nach Art. 64 Abs. 2 b), c), d) und e) EPGÜ. Die Ansprüche auf Rückruf und Vernichtung aus den Vertriebswegen betreffen nur die in den Vertriebswegen noch vorhandenen patentverletzenden Gegenstände und damit keinen vor Einreichung der Klage nach dem 1. Juni 2023 abgeschlossenen Sachverhalt. Dasselbe gilt für den Vernichtungsanspruch, der nur die in unmittelbaren und/oder mittelbaren Besitz und/oder im Eigentum des Verletzers befindlichen Erzeugnisse betrifft. X. Anderes gilt für den Anspruch auf Schadensersatz. Da jede einzelne Patentverletzung zu einem Schadensersatzanspruch führt, ist der Sachverhalt abgeschlossen, wenn die Einzelhandlung beendet ist. Benutzungshandlungen, die vor Inkrafttreten des EPGÜ abgeschlossen waren, sind deshalb im Hinblick auf Schadensersatzansprüche ausschließlich nach nationalem Recht zu beurteilen. XI. Dasselbe gilt für Auskunftsansprüche, die Art. 8 der Durchsetzungsrichtlinie (RL 2004/48/EG des Europäischen Parlaments und des Rates vom 29. April 2004) umsetzen, soweit diese nicht nach dem nationalen Recht dem Verfahrensrecht zugerechnet werden. Auf Auskunftsansprüche, die nach nationalem Recht verfahrensrechtlicher Natur sind, findet dagegen Art 67 EPGÜ Anwendung. XII. Für Schadensersatz oder Entschädigung aufgrund des vorläufigen Schutzes, den eine veröffentlichte Anmeldung eines europäischen Patents gewährt, enthält das EPGÜ keine materiellrechtliche Anspruchsgrundlage. Art. 32 f) EPGÜ enthält insoweit lediglich eine Kompetenzzuweisung. Deshalb muss das Gericht auf Grundlage des Art. 24 Abs. 1 c) EPGÜ die Vorschrift des Art. 67 EPÜ anwenden, die in ihrem Absatz 1 in erster Linie einen Schutz nach Art. 64 EPÜ (also Schadensersatz) vorsieht, aber in Absatz 2 den EPÜ-Vertragsmitgliedstaaten einen begrenzten Gestaltungsspielraum belässt, der bis zur unteren Grenze einer angemessenen Entschädigung reicht. Insoweit ist deshalb unabhängig vom Zeitpunkt des Entstehens des Anspruchs nationales Recht anwendbar. XIII. Es obliegt den Parteien, ihre rechtlichen Argumente und Gutachten privater Sachverständiger zum nationalen Recht vorzubringen (vgl. EPG-Berufungsgericht, 13 August 2025, UPC-CoA-446/2025, Boehringer Ingelheim/Zentiva, Rn. 72). Darlegungs- und beweisbelastet für das nationale Recht ist diejenige Partei, die sich auf einen bestimmten Inhalt des nationalen Rechts beruft. Das nationale Recht ist zwar keine Tatsache im Sinne des Art. 54 EPGÜ. Dessen Ermittlung ist jedoch nicht lediglich vom Inhalt der einschlägigen Gesetzestexte abhängig, sondern davon wie diese in der Rechtspraxis und Rechtslehre angewandt werden. Dies rechtfertigt eine analoge Anwendung des Art. 54 EPGÜ. XIV. Die Durchsetzungsrichtlinie wurde durch alle Mitgliedstaaten umgesetzt (vgl. Bericht der Kommission und den Rat, das Europäische Parlament, den europäischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialausschuss und den Ausschuss der Regionen, KOM (2010) 779 endg.). Nach Art. 13 Abs. 1 der Durchsetzungsrichtlinie müssen die Mitgliedstaaten sicherstellen, dass die zuständigen Gerichte auf Antrag der geschädigten Partei anordnen, dass der Verletzer, der wusste oder vernünftigerweise hätte wissen müssen, dass er eine Verletzungshandlung vornahm, dem Rechtsinhaber zum Ausgleich des von diesem wegen der Rechtsverletzung erlittenen Schadens angemessenen Schadensersatz zu leisten hat. Art. 68 Abs. 1 EPGÜ übernimmt diese Voraussetzungen für die Zuerkennung von Schadensersatz nahezu wortidentisch und geht nicht über diesen Mindestschutzstandard hinaus. Daraus ergibt sich die Vermutung, dass die Art. 13 der Durchsetzungsrichtlinie umsetzenden nationalen Regelungen dem Art. 68 Abs. 1 EPGÜ entsprechende Regelungen enthalten und jedenfalls nicht zu Ungunsten des Patentinhabers davon abweichen. XV. Da Art. 67 Abs. 1 EPGÜ die Vorgaben des Art. 8 der Durchsetzungsrichtlinie übernimmt, ist aus denselben Gründen davon auszugehen, dass der Anspruch auf Auskunft bei den Mitgliedstaaten nicht hinter den in Art. 67 Abs. 1 EPGÜ vorgesehenen Rechtsfolgen zurückbleibt.

The Court of Appeal settled which law governs infringement occurring before the UPCA entered into force. Jurisdiction and applicable substantive law are separate questions, so the Court's competence over pre-1 June 2023 acts does not make the UPCA's substantive provisions apply to them; for situations already completed on that date, national law determined under Art. 24(2)(a) UPCA and Art. 8(1) Rome II applies. A situation is completed once a legal position has arisen, which for an injunction means only when the infringement has definitively and seriously ceased, so injunctions and the recall and destruction remedies were unaffected by the non-retroactivity principle, whereas damages and substantive information claims for acts finished before that date fall to national law; the UPCA contains no substantive basis at all for compensation for provisional protection, which reaches national law through Art. 24(1)(c) UPCA and Art. 67 EPC. The party relying on a particular content of national law must plead and prove it, Art. 54 UPCA applying by analogy, but because Art. 68(1) and Art. 67(1) UPCA reproduce the Enforcement Directive's minimum standard almost verbatim, national implementations are presumed not to fall short of them. On the merits the Court also held that inserting a manufacturing process into a product claim leaves it a product claim whose process features count only in so far as they translate into properties of the product, and it refused to admit prior art searched for only after the first-instance decision.

The Paris Local Division declared the patent invalid in its entirety for added matter and dismissed the parallel infringement action without examining the accused products. The application as filed disclosed a single minimum value for the compound notion of bond strength, which the Court held necessarily implies that both the cohesive and the adhesive strength exceed that value; the granted claim recited the minimum for the cohesive strength alone and so embraced embodiments with an adhesive strength below it, an unallowable intermediate generalisation. That ground disposed of the patent, so the Court expressly declined to rule on insufficiency, novelty and inventive step, and did not examine the conditional auxiliary requests because none of them addressed added matter. On construction the Court held that a claim combining compositional features with post-treatment functional properties forms one indivisible whole, and construed the functional term 'non-resealable' by reference to its purpose: it is enough that the restored closure is significantly weaker than the original, so that a consumer can tell the package was opened. Costs followed the event under R. 118.5 RoP and Art. 69 UPCA.

ENGLISH: 1. To assess whether a party is the holder of an “exclusive licence” within the meaning of Art. 47(2) UPCA, it is decisive whether a licensee is entitled to solely use and to exclude others, including the patent proprietor, from using the patented invention, which includes, in the case of an infringement, the right to assert claims. This does not necessarily mean that the right to use the patented invention can only be licensed to one exclusive licensee in its entirety and without limitations. An exclusive licence may, for instance, be limited in terms of its geographical scope, field of use or duration. 2. In order for a prior art disclosure to be relevant for novelty, the disclosure must be such that the skilled person can reproduce it using common general knowledge, i.e. the skilled person must be able to carry out the teaching of the prior art. Absent such an enabling disclosure, there is no (complete) technical teaching in the prior art and hence no potentially novelty-destroying disclosure. 3. In case of a mere aggregation of two independent methods, whereby the features of these methods do not interact functionally to produce an effect that goes beyond mere addition in solving the objective problem but are simply juxtaposed, the combination of these two methods, both being not novel or at least non-inventive, cannot be held inventive. The skilled person would, as a matter of routine, combine these two Methods.

The Munich LD (Panel 2) revoked EP 2 401 365 (mRNA reengineering for increased protein production, the patent asserted against BioNTech/Pfizer's Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccines) in its entirety and dismissed both the infringement action and the conditional application to amend across 25 auxiliary requests. Granted claim 1 lacked novelty over both D2 (Matsuda — the second start codon of a bicistronic construct is a 'secondary initiation codon' within the claim) and D1 (WO '374), the Court holding that prior art is only novelty-relevant if it is an enabling disclosure the skilled person can reproduce (Headnote 2). All auxiliary requests failed on inventive step, added matter or clarity — notably AR4 (combining secondary-codon mutation with the miRNA method) was a mere aggregation of two functionally independent methods and therefore not inventive (Headnote 3, applying the CoA Amgen/Sanofi and Meril/Edwards framework). Even had the patent been valid, infringement failed: the exclusive licensee did not prove that any *actual* (as opposed to merely putative) secondary initiation codon was mutated in Comirnaty, because the observed expression increase was attributable to ordinary codon optimisation. On standing the Court gave an autonomous good-faith interpretation of Art. 47(2) UPCA, holding an exclusive licence may be limited by geography, field of use or duration and still confer standing (Headnote 1).

The Paris Central Division dismissed a revocation action and, in two headnotes, settled how a limitation granted by the European Patent Office during pending UPC revocation proceedings affects those proceedings. Because a limitation decision takes effect for all contracting states and retroactively under Art. 105b(3) and Art. 68 EPC, the limited version is the only legally effective version at the close of the court proceedings, and the Court therefore assesses validity in that version. Art. 105a(2) EPC, which bars a limitation request while an opposition is pending, cannot be applied by analogy to court revocation proceedings: neither the EPC nor the UPCA extends the bar, and Art. 33(10) UPCA positively contemplates parallel EPO and UPC proceedings — opposition, limitation and revocation alike — providing for a stay where a rapid EPO decision is expected, so there is no unintended lacuna. The EPO's limitation decision is an autonomous administrative act not open to indirect review by this Court, so objections to the admissibility of the limitation request were irrelevant. On the merits all grounds failed. The claim was held sufficiently disclosed, no added matter was found, novelty was established over each cited document, and inventive step was upheld from every realistic starting point relied on, two of the intervener's documents being rejected as starting points because they belong to the field of image projectors and address a different problem.

GERMAN: - 1. Wird das streitige Patent während eines Verfahrens zur Nichtigerklärung vor dem Einheitlichen Patentgericht durch das Europäische Patentamt mittels eines Beschränkungsverfahrens beschränkt, so beurteilt das Gericht die Gültigkeit des Patents in seiner beschränkten Fassung. - 2. Art. 105a (2) EPÜ hat auf Gerichtsverfahren zur Nichtigerklärung eines Patents vor dem Einheitlichen Patentgericht keinen Einfluss

In a revocation action before the Paris Central Division, the patentee obtained an EPO limitation of the patent under Art. 105a EPC while the UPC proceedings were pending. The Court held that it assesses validity in the limited version: under Art. 105b(3) and Art. 68 EPC the limitation takes effect ex tunc and is the only legally effective version at the close of the proceedings, and Art. 105a(2) EPC — which bars a limitation request only while an EPO opposition is pending — does not extend by analogy to UPC nullity proceedings, since Art. 33(10) UPCA expressly contemplates parallel EPO/UPC proceedings. On the merits, the Court rejected all invalidity grounds: the claim (focus-positioning features M10/M11/M14 and the sharp-edged polygonal cross-section M12) was held novel over all cited art, inventive over every asserted starting point under the CoA 'would-not-could' framework, free of added matter, and sufficiently disclosed. The action was dismissed and the patent maintained.

The Mannheim Local Division dismissed both an infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation brought against the same patent, and it did so on one construction applied symmetrically to validity and infringement. Construing the claim, the Court held that the secured software agent — in its entirety or at least the functionality responsible for validation — must reside in the same abstraction layer as the operating system kernel, that the validation must be triggered by the very request received through the upcall and must therefore occur at runtime rather than only at boot time, and that a mere permission check of the SELinux kind does not qualify as validation. On that construction the revocation attacks failed: a publicly available kernel source tree is a list of building blocks rather than a usable kernel and discloses no running combination performing runtime validation, D1 places the verification service in user space, and D6 discloses neither validation beyond permission granting nor sole access to a secured data storage; no combination supplied the missing features because the cryptographic context of the citations gives no prompt to restrict storage access. The same construction defeated the infringement claim: the claimant's own evidence, the DJI Drone Security White Paper, describes dm-verity as a boot-time integrity check, and no fact was put forward showing runtime operation in the accused embodiments. With each side losing one action the Court ordered each party to bear its own costs, holding that the higher value set for the counterclaim did not by itself make the counterclaim's winner the predominant winner, because that value reflects the patent's worth beyond these proceedings.

The Mannheim Local Division dismissed both the infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation, upholding EP 2 831 787 B1 as granted while finding it not infringed. On validity the panel rejected every ground — added matter, insufficiency, novelty and inventive step — applying the Court of Appeal frameworks from NanoString v 10x Genomics (claim construction), Amgen v Sanofi (added matter and sufficiency), Mammut v Ortovox (novelty) and Meril v Edwards (inventive step). The decisive issue was claim construction: the court held the claimed 'secured software agent' must reside in the same abstraction layer as the kernel and must validate dynamically at runtime in reaction to an upcall, going beyond mere permission-based access control. That same construction sank infringement — the claimant bore the burden of proving the attacked embodiments actually perform such runtime validation, and a generic expert opinion not tied to the specific implementation (where the protected partition is verified at boot time) was insufficient. Under the parties' 'flat amount' costs agreement the split outcome led the court to order each side to bear its own costs.

ENGLISH: The claimant’s legitimate interest in the publication of a decision (Art. 80 UPCA) may, depending on the circumstances of the individual case, follow from the fact that the defendant has marketed the attacked embodiment by explicitly referencing to the key technology protected by the patent.

The Düsseldorf Local Division decided an infringement action together with the counterclaim for revocation on the merits. It rejected every validity ground — insufficiency, added matter, invalid priority, lack of novelty and lack of inventive step — and maintained the patent as granted, so the auxiliary requests needed no examination. It found literal infringement of the apparatus claim on the strength of the Defendants' own advertising material, holding that an 'offering' under Art. 25(a) UPCA is an economic concept and that a device incorporating the claimed structural features infringes even as an inferior embodiment. It granted a permanent injunction over Germany, France and the Netherlands, rejecting a proportionality defence built on patients' interests, and granted the full Art. 67 UPCA information and accounting order, recall including from commercial end users, destruction of the products, a declaration of joint and several damages liability, and publication of the decision in restricted form. It refused permanent removal from the channels of commerce for want of concrete measures, destruction of dual-use manufacturing tools and advertising materials, an interim award of damages, and any order for enforcement security.

ENGLISH: An invention is sufficiently disclosed if the patent specification shows the skilled person at leastone way – and in case of functional features: one technical concept – of performing the claimedinvention. The disclosure of one way of performing the invention is only sufficient if it allows theinvention to be performed in the whole range claimed. More precisely, the disclosure shall enablea person skilled in the art to perform the invention without undue burden over the full scope ofprotection.

The Copenhagen Local Division revoked EP 4 238 202 B1 (a mobile hybrid generator system) in full on three independent grounds and dismissed the parallel infringement action. Construing the negative functional features 1.6-1.8 of claim 1 as a categorical prohibition on any connection between the primary energy source and the inverter, the Court held the patent insufficient under Art. 83 EPC: the same battery poles serve both charging and discharging, so the first (continuous-output) embodiment necessarily creates a direct generator-battery-inverter path during recharging, and the specification discloses no switching scheme or BMS architecture enabling the exclusion across the whole claimed scope - forcing the skilled person to create new technical insight, an undue burden. The Court further found the second (intermittent-output) embodiment anticipated by GB2434928A and claim 1 obvious over GB2493631A, where only the dimensioning feature 1.9 distinguishes and the prior art itself prompts that feature. Applying the Court of Appeal's Amgen v Sanofi sufficiency test and the Meril/Amgen inventive-step framework, while rejecting the Art. 123(2) EPC added-matter attack, the Court refused all four auxiliary requests and awarded the defendants full costs (combined reimbursement ceiling EUR 112,000).

ENGLISH: 1. The criteria set out by the Local Division The Hague form a coherent whole and are, as such, suitable for examining patent infringement by equivalent means. The present case does not give rise to any grounds for applying a different standard. 2. In order to determine technical equivalence, the claimant must not focus solely on the objective task of the patent in suit. Instead, it must demonstrate the function of each exchanged feature in achieving this objective and explain why the variation essentially performs the same function. 3. In general, it is not obvious to a skilled person how to apply the equivalent element if a complete redesign of the claimed device is required.

In a combined infringement action and revocation counterclaim concerning EP 1 905 615 (a swivel locking device for stroller wheels), the Düsseldorf Local Division dismissed both the action and the counterclaim. On validity, the patent survived: applying the Court of Appeal's added-matter principles it found features 1.9/1.10 directly and unambiguously derivable from para. [0014] of the application (the 'preferably' features being optional and independently disclosed, so no inadmissible intermediate generalisation); the sufficiency objection fell away under the adopted claim construction; claim 1 was novel over MB7, MB9, MB2/MB2a and MB12; and inventive step was not disproven because the defendants relied on the EPO Problem-Solution-Approach and failed to identify a pointer or reasonable expectation of success under the Court of Appeal's 'would-not-could' framework (MB14 being excluded as published on the validly claimed priority date). On infringement, the court held there was no literal infringement — the over-moulded 'stem' is in a fixed rotational relationship with the wheel bearing assembly and therefore part of it, not the seat, so features 1.9/1.10 were absent and there was no distinguishable clasping mechanism in the cavity. Crucially, since the Court of Appeal has not yet ruled on equivalence criteria, the Panel adopted the Local Division The Hague's four-question equivalence test and found no infringement by equivalents: the claimant failed technical equivalence (it did not show the function of each exchanged feature, reducing the invention to a mere 'secured connection'), failed the fair-protection limb (applying the equivalent required a complete redesign rearranging several components, which is not obvious to the skilled person), and failed legal certainty.