UPC CFI, CD Milan, 23 October 2025: Validity assesment limited to maximum number of documents
18-03-2026 Print this page
Patent maintained in the form of the third Auxiliary Request (Article 65 UPCA).
Appropriate to limit the revocation assessment to a maximum of different documents to challenge the novelty and to argue for non-inventiveness (R. 44 RoP, R. 104 RoP). The Court holds that the attacks not identified by bioMérieux as (most) promising do not warrant further investigation on the merits because, when the party submits a number of attacks that appear to be unmanageable by the Court in accordance with the principles of proportionality (point 3 of the preamble) and speed (point 7 of the preamble), and the same party is unable to re-module some of the attacks in such a way as to allow the Court to organise its time for the efficient management of the proceedings, it must be considered that if the (most) promising attacks, after assessment of the Court, do not affect the validity of the claim(s), the others wouldn’t have done so either.
Agreed amount of legal costs will not be kept confidential (Article 58 UPCA, R. 262 RoP):
In principle, the costs of the proceedings are not covered by confidentiality unless they are specifically indicative of the company's financial capacity, its commercial strategy, or the importance of the patent as a corporate asset. Since the agreement on the amount of the legal costs between parties, does not (simply) say anything about the company's financial capacity, its commercial strategy, or the importance of the patent as a corporate asset, the request of Labrador to order the agreed amount as confidential will be dismissed
