UPC Court of Appeal: Claim interpretation
The appellant appeals against a decision dismissing an application for provisional measures. The patent in suit protects an electronic label system for displaying information, in particular price information. The Court of First Instance was not sufficiently convinced that the accused products infringe the patent in suit. The appeal is dismissed because, after weighing the probabilities, the respondent's products do not fall within the scope of the patent in suit. Claim features must always be interpreted in light of the entire claim. The interpretation given is based on the wording of the claim, read in light of the specification and drawings from the perspective of a person skilled in the art with their general knowledge, without taking into account the prosecution history of the injunction patent. The parts of the documents from the examination proceedings before the European Patent Office cited by the parties do not cast new light on this interpretation. Therefore, the Court of Appeal does not need to address the question of whether the prosecution history can be taken into account when determining the scope of protection of a European patent in the present case (UPC 13.5.2024, CoA 1/2024).