UPC_CFI_846/2024

Decisions and documents (1)

• 2026-07-07procedural

  Claimant:

  Promosome LLC

  Defendants:

  The Scripps Research Institute; BioNTech Europe GmbH; BioNTech Innovative Manufacturing Services GmbH; BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH; BioNTech Manufacturing Marburg GmbH; BioNTech SE; Pfizer AB; Pfizer Manufacturing Belgium NV; Pfizer SAS; Pfizer, Inc.

  dismissed

  1. To assess whether a party is the holder of an “exclusive licence” within the meaning of Art. 47(2) UPCA, it is decisive whether a licensee is entitled to solely use and to exclude others, including the patent proprietor, from using the patented invention, which includes, in the case of an infringement, the right to assert claims. This does not necessarily mean that the right to use the patented invention can only be licensed to one exclusive licensee in its entirety and without limitations. An exclusive licence may, for instance, be limited in terms of its geographical scope, field of use or duration. 2. In order for a prior art disclosure to be relevant for novelty, the disclosure must be such that the skilled person can reproduce it using common general knowledge, i.e. the skilled person must be able to carry out the teaching of the prior art. Absent such an enabling disclosure, there is no (complete) technical teaching in the prior art and hence no potentially novelty-destroying disclosure. 3. In case of a mere aggregation of two independent methods, whereby the features of these methods do not interact functionally to produce an effect that goes beyond mere addition in solving the objective problem but are simply juxtaposed, the combination of these two methods, both being not novel or at least non-inventive, cannot be held inventive. The skilled person would, as a matter of routine, combine these two methods. Local Division Munich

  Judge: Dr Daniel Vo • Panel: Dr. Daniel Voß🔒 Unlock Official PDF