Tag: central division

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UPC infringement action before CD

An infringement action was lodged against Microsoft Corporation before the Central Division (CD) of the UPC. The matter is pending under case number ACT_18406/2024.

This appears to be the first infringement action lodged with the CD.

By way of background, Art. 33(1) UPCA establishes two possible venues for bringing an infringement action against a defendant that has its principal place of business outside the territory of the Contracting Member States: The infringement action against such a defendenat can be brought, at claimant’s choice, before (i) the local division or the regisional division of a state where the alleged infringement has occurred, or (ii) the CD. Thus, for defendants for which there is no venue in accordance with Art. 33(1)(b) UPCA, Art. 33(1) UPCA establishes an alternative venue (the CD) before which the action can be brought.

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UPC isolated revocation action

When testing some of the functionalities provided by the UPC CMS search tools, I came to realize that an isolated revocation action (i.e., a revocation action that is not a revocation counterclaim in an infringement action) has been lodged with the UPC central division in Munich on June 2, 2023, i.e., the second day of field operation. The patent is a bundle patent (i.e., no unitary effect, as it has been granted prior to June 1, 2023).

The value in dispute is 100 Mio. EUR. A lawsuit between the same parties regarding a U.S. patent family members of the patent now challenged before the UPC was recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Amgen vs. Sanofi. The U.S. case dealt with the interesting question of enabling disclosure over the full claim scope or, stated differently, the degree to which independent claims may be generalized as compared to the specific embodiments (which were considered to be disclosed in an enabling manner in the U.S. case).

This is a worthy start for the UPC system, which clearly attracts interesting cases.

It is a bit unfortunate that, notwithstanding all efforts to set up a modern, all electronic system, the revocation action appears to have been filed in paper form pursuant to R. 4.2 UPC (UPC CMS not working properly).