The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is a planned future court common to EU Member States which participate in the Unitary Patent system, and it will be part of their judicial system. After a transitional period of 7 years or 14 years at most, it will have exclusive competence in respect of traditional European patents and European patents with unitary effect (Unitary Patents). The UPC is based on the Unified Patent Court Agreement. The Unitary Patent system and the UPC are planned to start functioning once certain ratification conditions have been fulfilled.
The question of the role that UPC is likely to play in relation to SEPs (and therefore FRAND licenses) is one that I’ve heard most often since the new jurisdiction was born, certainly because the main aim of the UPC is to harmonize hitherto fragmented patent litigation in Europe, notably to improve legal certainty. However,…
This week we reported on the case between Huawei and Netgear, in which the defendant had obtained a production order for a comparable license granted by Huawei to Qualcomm, the production of which Netgear had obtained via a decision of the Munich local division on 24 April 2024. It is interesting to note that this…
Like a time machine, we began yesterday by examining the first revocation decision issued by the Munich Central Division on 16 July (see here), today we’ll be looking back at another earlier case, in which the Düsseldorf local division granted UPC’s first permanent injunction on 3 July. Note that this case has already been brilliantly…
On 16 July 2024, the Munich Central Division revoked a patent for the first time in the litigation between Sanofi, Regeneron, and Amgen (UPC_CFI_1/2023). This decision is important not only because it is the first of its kind, but also because it establishes UPC’s position on the patentability of therapeutic antibody inventions. In this case,…
Regular readers of this blog will be aware of my interest, or rather my passion, for several Patent Law topics, including notably SEPs (see notably here, here and here), proof of infringement (see notably here, here and here) and UPC (see notably here, here and here). So far, UPC has not (yet) been the scene…
Just over a year after the UPC Agreement came into force, the Paris local division handed down UPC’s first decision on an infringement action. Unfortunately for the patentee, the court dismissed his action, ruling that the patent invoked was null and void. In this case, two manufacturers, DEXCOM and ABBOTT, were involved in a dispute…
In June 2023, the UPC – at the Düsseldorf Local Division – granted its first ex parte provisional injunction (“PI”) in myStromer AG v Revolt Zycling AG (“myStromer v Revolt”), despite the defendant having previously filed a protective letter. A year on from that decision, and with only one other ex parte PI decision having…
The reasons for the decision are now available in the case of Ballino v UEFA and others, following an oral hearing on 3rd of June 2004 in the Hamburg local division. As was previously known, the panel comprising Presiding Judge Sabine Klepsch, Judge-rapporteur Dr. Stefan Schilling, and legally qualified Judge Samuel Granata dismissed the application…
In a decision issued today, the Düsseldorf Local Division has ordered the first ever permanent injunction at the UPC following a hearing on 16 May 2024. The injunction covers seven UPC member states: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. Notably, Germany was not included in the claim. The patent in question in…
Following months of speculation, EPO Board of Appeal 3.2.01 yesterday issued decision T 439/22 referring questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal on the extent to which the description and drawings should be used in claim interpretation. The claim feature at issue was: “in which the aerosol-forming substrate comprises a gathered sheet”. The key…
