Article 83

The European patent application shall disclose the invention in a manner sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by a person skilled in the art.

UPC Case Law

Court of Appeal

IPPT20241220, UPC CoA, Alexion Pharmaceuticals v Amgen
Insufficient disclosure (Article 83 EPC). Claimed pharmaceutical composition comprises an antibody comprising a light chain consisting of SEQ ID NO: 4 including the first 22 amino acids is not suitable for formulation as a pharmaceutical composition and used as a drug.

Court of First Instance

IPPT20250721, UPC CFI, RD Nordic Baltic, Edwards v Meril
Insufficient disclosure claim 9 (Article 83 EPC). It is not clear to the person skilled in the art how Fig. 36 of EP 722 need to be modified to meet the requirements of claim 9. 

IPPT20250616, UPC CFI, LD Düsseldorf, 10x Genomics v Curio Bioscience

Extent of protection – enabling disclosure (Article 69 EPC, Article 83 EPC). Even if the claim does not specify the more detailed technical design of the surface structure of the array at the time of release, the presence of an array in the aforementioned sense, from the surface of which the release takes place, remains necessary. 

IPPT20250529, UPC CFI, CD Paris, Lindal v Rocep-Lusol
Industrial applicability (Article 57 EPC) and insufficient disclosure (Article 83 EPC)(Article 138(1(a)(b) EPC). If an (alleged) invention would not comply with the generally accepted laws of physics falls within its scope because it cannot be used and therefore lacks industrial application. In such a situation, also the description would be insufficient to the extent that the applicant would not be able to describe how it could be made to work. claim 5 does not meet the criteria for industrial applicability under Articles 57 and 138 (1) (a) ‘EPC’ and must be considered as invalid. Since the application is addressed to the skilled person, it is neither necessary nor desirable to give details of well-known ancillary features. However, the description must disclose any feature essential for carrying out the invention in sufficient detail to make it apparent to the skilled person how to put the invention into practice without undue burden. (Article 83 EPC). 

IPPT20250513, UPC CFI, LD Düsseldorf, Sanofi v Amgen

Enabling disclosure (Article 83 EPC, Article 138(1)(b) EPC). It is the position of the Court that the subject-matter of a patent claim must be sufficiently disclosed in the patent as a whole, including the examples. It is the patent that has to demonstrate the workability of the claimed subject-matter. However, as the invention has to be disclosed sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by the skilled person, the skilled person´s common general knowledge must also be taken into account when considering the question of sufficiency. In a case of a second medical use claim, the claimed “use”, which is based on a therapeutic effect, is part of the claim. Therefore, the use (including the therapeutic effect) has to be sufficiently (reproducibly) disclosed in the patent (as a whole). 

IPPT20250508, UPC CFI, LD Düsseldorf, Grundfos v Hefei

Enabling disclosure (Article 83 EPC). That the patent specification learns nothing regarding the design of means for connecting, does not relate to the feasibility, but at most to the clarity of the claim [Article 84 EPC], which is not a ground for invalidity within the meaning of Art. 138 EPC. 

IPPT20250128, UPC CFI, LD Düsseldorf, Fujifilm v Kodak
Insufficient disclosure of the claimed invention over the complete scope of the granted claims. (Article 83 EPC, Article 138(2) EPC). As the features of the claims define the “invention” considered under Art. 138(1)b) EPC, a technical effect is to be taken into account in assessing sufficiency only if it is explicitly claimed. 

IPPT20241226, UPC CFI, CD Paris, Advanced Bionics v MED-EL
No insufficient disclosure (Article 83 EPC, Article 138(1)(b) EPC). Embodiment construed by the Claimants is not part of the subject-matter of the patent. On that basis, the Claimants objections with regard to insufficiency of disclosure are moot. The skilled person is deemed to possess the relevant ‘CGK’ and use it by reading the patent and implementing the embodiments. Therefore, this teaching should be clear to the skilled person and enable him/her to produce embodiments with a disc-shaped magnet rotatable in the plane of the coil housing parallel to the patient’s skin (and to the magnetic field of the MRI machine). Hence, the patent fulfils the sufficiency requirements under Article 83 EPC. 

IPPT20240729, UPC CFI, CD Paris, Bitzer v Carrier Corporation
Enabling disclosure of a “user induced event” (Article 83 EPC) in view of what the description teaches and provides as examples and of what is general common knowledge. 

PPT20240626, UPC CFI, LD Hamburg, Alexion Pharmaceuticals v Amgen
Likely insufficient disclosure of technical teaching (Article 83 EPC). an antibody with the claimed signal peptide could not haven been used as a drug. The Applicant and its expert [...] concur that an antibody with the signal peptide could not have been used as drug (= pharmaceutical composition). It would exhibit an extreme tendency to aggregate under physiological buffer conditions due to their pronounced hydrophobic properties, which would prevent them from being formulated as pharmaceutical composition and used as a drug. Based on this, the technical teaching according to the patent might not be sufficiently disclosed and likely be revoked by the opposition division.