Key takeaways
Legal interest in revocation proceedings must be examined by the Court of its own motion, even where the defendant does not challenge admissibility (headnote 1; para. 11)
The Court held that legal interest is a question of law forming part of admissibility. This examination was particularly necessary here because the patent had already expired by the time the revocation action was filed, raising the question whether the claimants still had standing.
A revocation action is not necessarily inadmissible where the patent has expired, particularly where past infringement claims remain possible (headnote 2, para. 12 et seqq.)
Neither the UPCA nor the RoP contain any provision rendering a revocation action inadmissible by reason of patent expiry. The claimants had a concrete legal interest because the defendant had sought evidence preservation measures before a Belgian national court and had announced damages claims for alleged past infringement during the lifetime of the patent.
The description and drawings may show that the patent document defines terms independently and thus constitutes a patent-specific lexicon in this regard (para. 21)
Even if the terms used in the patent deviate from their common use, the meaning of the terms resulting from the patent document may ultimately be decisive. When applying these principles, the aim is to combine adequate protection for the patent holder with sufficient legal certainty for third parties.
The Court is not bound by the objective technical problem stated in the patent but may determine it independently (Art. 69 EPC) (para. 37 et seqq.)
The Court reformulated the objective problem on the basis of the description and drawings as a whole. While the patent framed the problem around both adhesion and flame protection, the Court focused the objective problem on improving adhesion between a cover layer and a polyisocyanaurate foam layer using an adhesion promoter, treating flame protection as a given.
When examining auxiliary requests, the Court is bound solely by the arguments the claimant advances against them (Art. 76(2) UPCA) (para. 124)
Grounds of invalidity raised against the granted version under the main request are not automatically carried over to the auxiliary requests. Here, the claimants failed to invoke their strongest prior art (D19) against Auxiliary Request 1, and the Court did not supplement the attack of its own motion. The patent was consequently maintained in the amended form of Auxiliary Request 1 (para. 143).
Division
Central Division Paris
UPC number
UPC_CFI_461/2025
Type of proceedings
Revocation action
Parties
Claimants: Huntsman (EUROPE) BV, Huntsman Holland BV
Defendant: BASF SE
Patent(s)
EP 1 516 720
Jurisdictions
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia
Body of legislation / Rules
Art. 76(2) UPCA
Art. 69 EPC
