Tilman Pfrang, LL.M. | 4th December 2025
This edition covers important rulings from the Court of Appeal, the Central Division Milan, and the Local Division in The Hague. Key themes include the rejection of claim construction, equivalence and limits regarding the number of validity attacks inrevocation proceedings.
The Hague Local Division (UPC_CFI_187/2024; UPC_CFI_507/2024, Decision of 18 November 2025)
In Advanced Cell Diagnostics v Molecular Instruments, the Hague Local Division ruled on two patents concerning RNA probe technologies. While both patents survived validity challenges, the panel found no infringement – neither literal nor by equivalence. It interpreted “non-overlapping” probe sequences as requiring an absolute absence of overlap and rejected the UK High Court’s more lenient approach in related litigation. The court also found that the accused overlap in MI’s HCR probes served a distinct technical function and could not be treated as an equivalent workaround. On novelty, the panel rejected a combination of Collins and Kern, holding that a generic reference to a second document was insufficient to constitute a direct and unambiguous incorporation for novelty purposes.
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Court of Appeal (UPC_CoA_579/2025; APL_30654/2025, Decision of
7 November 2025)
The Court of Appeal overturned a preliminary injunction granted by the Hamburg LD in OTEC v STEROS and clarified that experimental data not disclosed in the patent specification are generally not relevant to claim interpretation. The ruling concerned an electrolytic polishing medium, where the decisive term was a “non-conductive fluid”. The court held that emulsions must be assessed as a whole and fixed the threshold for “not significantly conducting” at ≤ 10 µS/cm. Post-filed test data submitted by STEROS were disregarded, as were conductivity measurements that did not reflect the finished product as claimed.
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Court of Appeal (UPC_CoA_762/2024; UPC_CoA_773/2024, Decision of 5 November 2025)
In Seoul Viosys v expert klein, the Court of Appeal confirmed the revocation of EP 3 223 320 for added matter. The decision contains important clarifications on how translations of international applications are treated for the purpose of Art. 123(2) EPC. The court held that where the original PCT application is not in an EPO official language, the applicant’s translation filed on Euro-PCT entry is presumed to be accurate and is binding unless the proprietor can prove otherwise. It also confirmed that “comprising” and the singular “a mesa” are not restrictive and, in the absence of clear limitations, cover multiple elements.
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Central Division Milan (UPC_CFI_497/2024; UPC_CFI_571/2024, Decision of 23 October 2025)
In bioMérieux v Labrador Diagnostics, the Milan Central Division confirmed the validity of EP 3 756 767 B1 and upheld the patent in the form of Auxiliary Request 3. The panel criticised the claimant’s attempt to raise more than 50 separate invalidity attacks, calling it incompatible with judicial resources and indicative of poor strategy. It limited the claimant to a few selected prior art documents under Rules 262 and 263 RoP. The court declined to apply the EPO’s problem–solution approach and instead used a broad obviousness assessment based on whether the skilled person would have a motivation to combine known systems.
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