Summary of the UPC month
In April, 16 new infringement actions were filed with the UPC’s Court of First Instance. This means that monthly numbers continue to be higher in 2025 than in 2024.
The Düsseldorf Local Division, which is in second place in terms of the number of cases received, attracted more new cases in April than the Munich Local Division, which still clearly remains the “UPC capital”, however.
In total, the Court of First Instance now received 836 cases.
- For the time being, claimants were more successful in proceedings on the merits before the Court of First Instance than defendants as of April 30th, 2025. Of course, these statistics may change on appeal.
- Success rates in PI proceedings, for now, seem to be level for applicants and defendants.
Key decisions in a nutshell
The key decisions of the month are dealing with:
(1) Guiding principles when a patent can be considered as its own lexicon
The definition of claimed features based on the principle that a patent may be used as its “own lexicon” is limited to those parts of the description that are related to the feature in question. Specifications in the description that are not consistent with the granted claims cannot serve as a basis for a broad interpretation of a claim.
(2) Infringement of product-by-process claims
Product-by-process claims are characterized by the fact that the technical content of the invention regularly does not consist in the process as such, but in the technical properties imparted to the product by the process. The decisive factor is how the person skilled in the art understands the information on the manufacturing process and which conclusions he draws from this with regard to the nature of the product according to the invention.
(3) Broad Interpretation of Divisions’ Territorial Jurisdiction
Art. 33(1)(b) s. 2 UPCA allows multiple defendants to be sued at the domicile, principal place of business or, failing that, at the place of business of one of the defendants, provided that the defendants have a commercial relationship, and the action concerns the same alleged infringement. In the context of a European patent without unitary effect, the term “the same infringement” addresses situations where multiple defendants are accused of infringing the relevant national designations of the same European patent by the same product or process. Another interpretation would undermine the purpose of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court to overcome the fragmented patent litigation landscape in Europe (preamble 2 of the UPCA).
Remarks
In April, the UPC confirmed anew its stance that the provisions about jurisdiction will be applied by the UPC in a broad manner. This holds true for its international jurisdiction as well as for the territorial jurisdiction of the UPC’s respective local divisions and finally also for subject-matter jurisdiction, i.e. the actions on which the UPC is competent to rule.
The UPC’s stance is only logical as jurisdiction is the most important bottleneck – no jurisdiction, no case.
