Dyson v SharkNinja (UPC_CFI_442/2023)

• Dyson brought an application for provisional measures for alleged infringement by SharkNinja of its patent relating to a handheld vacuum cleaner, which is in force in Germany and France.
• In considering the urgency requirement necessary for the grant of interim measures, the court must take into account any unreasonable delay when applying for provisional measures. The necessary urgency is only deemed lacking if the applicant has behaved negligently and hesitantly in bringing their claim such that the only conclusion is that the party is not interested in the timely enforcement of their rights. The Munich LD held that if there is suspected infringement of rights in two or more countries and the applicant brings its application within two months of becoming aware of the different alleged infringements (in this case at two different trade fairs) then, as a general rule, it cannot be said to have acted with unreasonable delay.
• In undertaking an assessment of validity and infringement, the Munich LD followed the Court of Appeal's decision on the interpretation of patent claims in 10x Geonmics v Nanostring.
• The court confirmed that due to the summary nature of the review of validity in interim proceedings, it cannot consider all challenges to the validity of the patent. It is usually expected that the best three arguments are put forward by the respondent.
• The Munich LD decided that the attacked SharkNinja product made literal use of the features of claim 1 and therefore infringed the patent. The court considered that none of the prior art citations sufficiently called into question the validity of the patent with the required "overwhelming probability".
• In balancing the parties' interests, the court decided that against the background of its finding of infringement, SharkNinja did not have a legitimate interest in continuing to offer or distribute the attacked product in Germany or France. Thus, the requested preliminary injunction was granted.

This analysis is based on a machine translation of a decision not available in English