This is a summary of developments in and around the Unified Patent Court (UPC) in the week since our November 24, 2025 UPC Roundup.
1. CoA
1.1 CoA clarifies inventive step, territorial scope, and public-interest limits (Edwards v. Meril)
(link to detailed article with nine takeaways for practitioners)
In the long-running Edwards v. Meril dispute, a major appellate decision issued on November 25, 2025. In a consolidated ruling addressing multiple appeals and cross-appeals, the Court of Appeal (CoA) largely upheld a Court of First Instance (CFI) ruling but reshaped key aspects of procedure, inventive-step analysis, and remedies. The court confirmed that parties must act swiftly when seeking to extend proceedings to newly acceding UPCA member states. It took a more flexible approach to patent-claim amendments, allowing (as did the Munich Local Division (LD)) Edwards’s late-stage auxiliary requests aimed at harmonizing its positions across related revocation actions. On substance, the court held that embodiments described in the patent specification are not automatically covered by the claims and endorsed a “holistic” inventive-step framework that should, in practice, align with outcomes under the European Patent Office’s (EPO) problem-solution approach.
1.2 CoA reinstates Amgen patent, refines medical-use and inventiveness tests (Amgen v. Sanofi)
The CoA has reversed a decision by the Munich seat of the Central Division (CD) reinstating an Amgen patent that was invalidated in the court below. The appellate panel found the patent to involve an inventive step and declared it valid, allowing the infringement case in the Munich LD to be unstayed. The court clarified key principles on claim construction, added matter, sufficiency, and inventive step. For medical-use claims, the court held that patentees must be able to demonstrate a meaningful therapeutic effect because choosing that claim format imposes substantive obligations.
1.3 CoA backs Brussels LD on territorial competence; obtaining unitary effect is formality that fails to justify delay (Barco v. Yealink (Xiamen) Network Technology)
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8. Around the court
8.1 UPC adopts major fee revision
The UPC’s Administrative Committee has approved a major update to the court’s fee system, adopting amendments to the table of court Fees, the RoP, and the fee-determination guidelines during its 4 November 2025 meeting. The overhaul includes inflation-based adjustments to fees set in 2016. The reform also revises the reimbursement scheme and introduces safeguards to limit the financial impact on SMEs. Committee Chairman Johannes Karcher described the changes as necessary to ensure fair access to justice while moving the court toward financial self-sufficiency by 2030.
8.2 UPC introduces weekly CMS maintenance window
The UPC has announced that its Case Management System (CMS) will undergo regular maintenance windows, which may occur weekly between 17:00 and 19:00. The court advised users that the schedule is intended to support routine system updates and ensure stable platform performance. To keep practitioners informed, the court will publish the specific dates of each maintenance window on its homepage.