Patent maintained in amended form.
Court must examine the standing to sue on its own motion.
Revocation action admissible despite patent expiry (Article 65 UPCA, R. 42 RoP). A revocation action remains admissible after expiry if infringement damages for the past are at stake. Claimants had a legitimate interest due to pending enforcement actions (evidence preservation and damages).
Purely editorial corrections to auxiliary requests admissible (R. 263 RoP).
Inventive Step (Article 56 EPC, R. 30 RoP). The Court is not bound by the patent’s stated problem and may reformulate the problem based on the whole disclosure. The Court found that the real technical problem is improving adhesion between PIR foam and deck layers, not flame retardancy. The technical difference (density ranges) is a routine selection because they overlapped with known values in the prior art and reflected standard parameters that a skilled person would adjust based on practical requirements. Since no specific or unexpected technical effect was linked to these ranges, their selection did not involve an inventive step.
Application to amend the patent (R. 30 RoP). When examining the auxiliary claims, the court is bound by the arguments put forward by the plaintiff regarding their patentability and takes only those into account. The grounds cited in the main claim with respect to the granted version are therefore taken into account when examining the auxiliary claims only if the plaintiff invokes them.
Costs to be shared as claimants were not entirely successful in their claims (Article 69 UPCA).
As the defendant has not submitted a claim for costs, the Court issues an order, on the basis of Article 76 of the UPCA, only on the costs of the claimants.
