UPC CFI, CD Paris, 21 January 2025: Court not convened that it would be obvious to combine

Revocation action dismissed (Article 65 UPCA).  

Court not convinced that it would have been obvious to suggest the claimed vaporizer, regardless of ‘Cross’ being combined with an alleged common general knowledge or with ‘Lee’. 

To asses inventive step (Article 56 EPC) it is first necessary to determine one or more realistic starting points in the state of the art which would be of interest to a person skilled in the art who, at the priority date of the patent in suit, was seeking to develop a product or process similar to that disclosed in the prior art. In particular, realistic starting points are the documents which disclose the main relevant features as those disclosed in the challenged patent or which address the same or a similar underlying problem. Against this background, ‘Cross’ is not a suitable starting point for the evaluation of inventive step. 

Admissibility of late filed assertions and late filed evidentiary documents (R. 263 RoP, R. 32 RoP).. 

The documents introduced by the claimant in the reply to defence to revocation – including the declaration released by […] and the documents referred to in that statement – are admissible, given that they contain arguments regarding the common general knowledge and the claim construction which are intended to contrast and react to the arguments raised by defendant in its defence to revocation and the evidence […] filed in support of these latter arguments. The admissibility of these late filed documents shall also extend to arguments that, while not constituting a direct response to the defendant’s arguments, are closely related to them. 

Individual line of arguments to use the combination of ‘Pan’ with either ‘Duke’, ‘Tucker’ or ‘CAS’ considered late filed as it was not raised in the statement for revocation, but only in the reply to the defence and hence must be disregarded.

IPPT20250121, UPC CFI, CD Paris, NJOY Netherlands v VMR Products