In 'UPC Unfiltered' for week 37 of 2026, published September 14, Willem Hoyng of Hoyng Rokh Monegier reviews the latest Unified Patent Court decisions, led by the Milan Local Division's September 7 preliminary injunction in Abbott v Sibio over EP 3 960 072, covering a compact on-body physiological monitoring device asserted against the defendants' glucose monitor. Notably, the court accepted the respondents' new arguments on claim element 1.6 even though they were filed in the last submission — reasoning that claim interpretation is a matter of law the Court of Appeal would review in any event — yet still found the patent inventive and infringed, and granted the PI despite a pending EPO opposition and an earlier PI granted by The Hague division against different defendants.

The Milan court also restated the UPC's sufficiency-of-disclosure standard, citing the Court of Appeal: sufficiency is assessed on the patent as a whole from the skilled person's perspective, and the test is whether the skilled person can reproduce the claimed subject matter without inventive effort and without undue burden. For functional features, the specification must show at least one workable technical principle for performing the invention, and the non-availability of some embodiments within a functional definition is immaterial so long as the skilled person can obtain suitable embodiments within the claim's scope. Hoyng largely agrees, adding that only where the invention lies in the specific way a function is performed should the claim be confined to it. He also flags the tension between the UPC's front-loaded character and the court's duty to apply the law correctly, arguing late legal arguments should generally be refused but the other side must always get a chance to respond before any 'surprise' decision.

In fiskaly v SwissBit (Dusseldorf, September 7), the court upheld an ex parte evidentiary seizure and inspection order over a unitary patent on securely registering transaction sequences, finding the invasive measure necessary because of a risk that evidence would otherwise become unavailable; Hoyng draws the practical lesson that protective letters filed without non-infringement arguments do little to ward off a seizure. In Nixu v Amazon (Milan, September 4), the judge-rapporteur set a single consolidated defence date of October 29 for four Amazon group defendants served on different dates — efficient at first glance, Hoyng writes, but potentially counterproductive if it discourages group defendants from seeking consolidation at all.

On fees, the Mannheim Local Division's September 9 order in Ericsson v Transsion shows standard practice done right: the parties settled the SEP case before the written proceedings closed, the claimant combined its withdrawal request with a request for reimbursement, and the court ordered the standard 50% return of court fees — even though one defendant had not commented and another had not appeared, which did not bar withdrawal. Hoyng approves: combining the fee-refund request with the withdrawal request 'is the way to do it.'

Original Link: https://www.hoyngrokhmonegier.com/news-insights/detail/upc-unfiltered-by-willem-hoyng-upc-decisions-week-37-2026