Analytics 33Cases 36Decisions 37Judges 165Parties 12Firms

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Legal issues

Cross-cutting view of legal principles, recurring arguments, and the prior art the court relies on.

Most-litigated legal principles

Recurring legal principles across 1 cases with reasoning extracted. Success rate counts patentee-favorable outcomes only.

Principle	Cases	Decided	Patentee success
amended unitary patent takes effect from original european patent grant date	1	1	100%
national parts of a european patent in non-upca states assessed against the patent as originally granted	1	1	100%
non-publicly-accessible documents do not constitute common general knowledge	1	1	100%
the skilled person is an executor, not a creative innovator	1	1	100%
unconditional amendment of unitary patent: risk of annulment by non-upc national courts assessed on original (unamended) claims	1	1	100%
doctrine of equivalents requires that the equivalent function be derivable from the patent by the skilled person	1	1	0%
plausibility standard for equivalence: alleged equivalent function must be more likely than not derivable without ambiguity	1	1	0%
patentee cannot rely on functions neither claimed nor described in the patent to establish equivalence	1	1	0%
purposive claim construction does not allow extending protection beyond what the patent discloses as the technical effect	1	1	0%
novelty: an invention is part of the state of the art when disclosed completely and unambiguously in a single prior art document or prior use	1	1	0%
inventive step: objective technical problem must be derived from effects causally related to claimed technical features; effects requiring additional information not in the application cannot define the problem	1	1	0%
amendment during proceedings subject to admissibility requirements (r. 30.2 rop)	1	1	0%
revocation defeats infringement action	1	1	0%
settlement confirmed by paris local division under r. 365 rop including withdrawal of revocation counterclaim	1	1	0%
settlement terms remain confidential under r. 365.2 rop	1	1	0%
no order as to costs where parties agree to bear own costs	1	1	0%
direct infringement under art. 25 upca does not require prior notice of the patent to the defendant	1	1	100%
upc applies arts. 25-26 upca as substantive infringement law, not national law, including for acts before 1 june 2023	1	1	100%
novelty: invention must be found in its entirety in a single prior art document in the same form, arrangement, and functioning for the same technical result	1	1	100%
in french-language proceedings, claim interpretation arguments are assessed by reference to the application as originally filed in english	1	1	100%

Most-rejected arguments

Arguments that the UPC has not accepted, ranked by repeat occurrences across cases.

Argument	Party	Cases
counterclaim for nullity of claims 1 and 6 of the amended patent and subsidiary requests	Respondent	1
infringement of the swiss national part of the patent should also be found	Claimant	1
decision should be disseminated to mul-t-lock's customers	Claimant	1
the ghost product infringes claim 1 by equivalence because longitudinal alignment of spacers and openings serves the same function of improving water flow	Claimant	1
diagrams presented by claimant showed improved water trajectory justifying equivalence finding	Claimant	1
application to amend the patent (auxiliary requests) should be admitted	Claimant	1
infringement action for ep 2 726 230 b1	Claimant	1
exhaustion defence / competition law argument as a defence to infringement	Respondent	1
invalidity counterclaim: patent claims lack novelty, involve added matter, lack inventive step, or are insufficient	Respondent	1
upc claim interpretation must be based on french-language patent application rather than the original english-language application	Respondent	1
ep 3435866 is novel and inventive; dependent claims 2–9 are independently valid	Claimant	1
infringement of ep 3435866 by abbott entities' continuous glucose monitoring devices	Claimant	1
abbott's carve-out defence limits scope of revocation counterclaim to upc-claimed territories	Claimant	1

Most-cited prior art

References relied on across substantive merits cases, with the role they typically play.

Reference	Predominant role	Cases
Prior use (Girderflex machine) at EUR 2,000,000 price point	Novelty-destroying	1