The case concerned a request for a review of an ex parte order for securing evidence related to a potential infringement of a patent in the mechanical/electronic field.
Today, the UPC court issued a ruling that upheld the earlier decision on securing evidence and inspection of the defendants’ property to clarify the existence and scope of a potential patent infringement.
The ruling states that the rules on preservation of evidence under the UPC Agreement do not require full proof for the patent infringement, and that there is no requirement for the infringement to be established with high certainty. The UPC court thus establishes that a relatively lenient standard of proof applies for the implementation of an evidence preservation procedure.
Read about the evidence preservation here.
The UPC court found that one of the defendants’ posts on Facebook and LinkedIn, which the plaintiff had submitted, supported the presumption that the infringement of the plaintiff’s patent had taken place or would take place at the defendants’ address. The written witness statements regarding the technical setup of the contested products, which the defendant had submitted, were not considered sufficient to establish that an infringement of the plaintiff’s patent rights had not occurred.
In the case, the defendant argued that the contested patent was invalid due to lack of novelty and inventive step. However, the UPC court did not find that the material presented by the defendants could remove the clear presumption that the contested patent is valid.
Finally, the UPC court found that the plaintiff was right to direct the request for preservation of evidence at five parties, all of which were company-related and had the same address. The defendant did not succeed in arguing that it was in violation of the principle of proportionality to direct the request at parties other than the one defendant who had marketed the contested products on its website.
The claimant was represented by attorney (H) Mikkel Kleis and European Patent Attorney Lasse Rosenfeld Lauridsen. Additionally, attorney Christoffer Lindhardt Larsen assisted in the case and was present in court.
