UPC’s Dusseldorf LD enjoins Siemens mammography product over Hologic’s flying-focal-spot patent, refusing a €4 billion security demand

Context:

• Hologic and Siemens Healthineers compete in breast-imaging hardware and are now in dispute before the UPC. Hologic, a U.S. medical technology company, owns EP2352431 (“Method and system for controlling x-ray focal spot characteristics for tomosynthesis and mammography imaging”), which it has asserted against Siemens’s MAMMOMAT B.brilliant mammography system, marketed with Siemens’s “Flying Focal Spot” technology and launched at the end of September 2023.
• The patent was filed on November 23, 2009, claiming priority from a US provisional of November 24, 2008, and was granted on August 15, 2018. It was opted out of the UPC on May 26, 2023, and the opt-out was withdrawn on November 21, 2024, reopening the possibility of a UPC action. It had already survived a European Patent Office (EPO) opposition brought by Siemens Healthcare GmbH. The Opposition Division rejected the opposition on June 24, 2021, and the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) rejected the appeal on February 14, 2024. Hologic then sued the parent company, Siemens Healthineers AG, together with three subsidiaries before the Dusseldorf LD.