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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
common general knowledge definition: information commonly known from written sources or practical experience in the relevant technical field	1	1	100%
cgk does not necessarily include all publicly available knowledge	1	1	100%
problem-solution approach applied: skilled person must have motivation to consult prior art from a different technical field	1	1	100%
power consumption constraints relevant to assessing whether cross-field combination is obvious	1	1	100%
defendant's alternative request for partial maintenance without specifying a particular claim is admissible and obliges the court to examine which dependent claims remain valid (art. 65(3) upca)	1	1	0%
dependent claims can acquire independent validity in combination with an invalid independent claim	1	1	0%
common general knowledge of on/off switches and activation buttons in electronic devices supports obviousness of such features	1	1	0%
front-loaded procedure: claimant in revocation must specify all invalidity grounds and prior art in the statement of revocation; new grounds and novelty-destroying documents may not be introduced in subsequent briefs unless responsive to defendant's defence	1	1	0%
proportionality and procedural efficiency: parties should not be burdened with overly detailed allegations of undisputed matters	1	1	0%
patent specification or published patent application can indicate common general knowledge when the author states the teaching is widely known	1	1	0%
partial maintenance request must be substantiated and reasonable in number; bare unsubstantiated reference to combinations is insufficient (r.30(1)(c), r.50(2) rop)	1	1	0%
claim interpretation and clarity are threshold issues in revocation proceedings	1	1	100%
added matter under art. 123(2) epc assessed for both granted claims and proposed amendments	1	1	100%
late auxiliary requests may be rejected as inadmissible; reasonable number of conditional amendments required (r.50(2) rop)	1	1	100%
where both parties partially succeed (patent invalid as granted but maintained as amended), each party bears its own costs (art. 69(2) upca)	1	1	100%
conditional amendments (auxiliary requests) must be reasonable in number and precisely formulated; vague references to 'any combination' of dependent claims do not constitute allowable requests	1	1	0%
twelve conditional auxiliary requests considered the upper limit of what is reasonable in a revocation action	1	1	0%
requests for partial maintenance must identify specific combinations and provide arguments why those combinations support validity	1	1	0%
added matter / clarity: claim 1 invalidity necessarily invalidates dependent claims 2-5 when they are not independently sustained	1	1	0%

Most-rejected arguments

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

Argument	Party	Cases
defendant's submission of 31 may 2024 (inadmissible late submission)	Respondent	2
claim 1 obvious over cross or pan combined with difonzo	Claimant	1
claim 1 obvious over pan combined with common general knowledge	Claimant	1
patent should be maintained as granted (claim 1 valid)	Respondent	1
auxiliary requests to amend the patent overcome invalidity of claim 1	Respondent	1
dependent claims 2, 3, 4 and 5 have independent validity	Respondent	1
patent valid: claim 1 and all dependent claims are not obvious	Respondent	1
partial maintenance: patent should be maintained to the extent of one or more dependent claims in combination with claim 1 of proposed amendments	Respondent	1
auxiliary requests iia, viia, viiia, ixa and xiia filed on 13 november 2024	Respondent	1
patent valid as granted: claim 1 meets clarity and added matter requirements	Respondent	1
thirteen auxiliary requests (including conditional request (2)d. for 'one or more dependent claims as granted in combination with claim 1 of auxiliary request 1')	Respondent	1

Most-cited prior art

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

Reference	Predominant role	Cases
Cross	Obviousness combination	1
Pan	Obviousness combination	1
DiFonzo	Obviousness combination	1
Pan (prior art document — e-cigarette/vaporizer with airflow sensor activation)	Obviousness combination	1
Cross (prior art document — vaporizer device with microcontroller and user activation switch)	Obviousness combination	1
Griffith (prior art document — electronic smoking device with pushbutton activation)	Obviousness combination	1
Pan (prior art document — vaporizer/e-cigarette with airflow sensor and liquid)	Novelty-destroying	1