Latest substantive UPC decisions

• Meril's request to expedite appeals relating to the first instance finding (that Edwards' European Patent for a prosthetic heart valve was valid) was rejected.
• When considering an expedition request, the court must balance the interests of both parties while ensuring that the principles of due process are adequately taken into account.
• The possibility that the Munich LD might grant an injunction on the basis of a patent that has been upheld by the Court of First Instance but may subsequently be revoked by the Court of Appeal is not sufficient to justify expediting an appeal. The Court of First Instance has various means at its disposal to mitigate the risk of granting an injunction or the harm caused by an injunction in situations where the validity of the patent is subject to appeals.

• Novartis and Genentech's application for provisional measures (preliminary injunction) was rejected by the Düsseldorf LD.
• Novartis and Genentech were the proprietors of an EP and they alleged (imminent) infringement by the defendants. The defendants are all part of the Celltrion group, the parent company of which is involved in parallel UPC litigation. The parent company has developed a biosimilar and the defendant group companies have a manufacturing and distribution network.
• In the case of multiple defendants, where one of the defendants has its residence within the territory of the LD seized, Article 33(1)(b) UPCA must be applied, regardless of whether the other defendants are located outside of that territory or inside or outside the EU. The requirements that must be met for the court to have competence are therefore that the multiple defendants have a commercial relationship and the action relates to the same alleged infringement.
• There was competence here as Novartis and Genentech sufficiently stated that i) one of the defendants was domiciled in Germany; ii) all the defendants had a commercial relationship and iii) the application concerned the same alleged infringing acts.
• The court disagreed with the defendants that different national approaches should be applied to assess the "threat of imminent infringement" during the UPC's transitional period: it is the for the UPC to determine, on the basis of the UPCA, what requirements must be met in order for an infringement to exist.
• The court concluded that there was not yet sufficient evidence that the alleged infringement was imminent. Imminent infringement involves "certain circumstances" which suggest that although the infringement has not yet occurred, "the potential infringer has already set the stage for it to occur". This is assessed on a case by case basis. The court did not find that the defendants had already completed all the pre-launch preparations. Although the first defendant had obtained a marketing authorisation and there was some promotion of this, the advertising materials did not include a specific timeline, there was no information on any price negotiations or reimbursement applications by the defendants, and samples were not presented to customers.

• Advanced Bionics' preliminary request to refer the infringement action to the Paris CD to be heard alongside the revocation action was rejected by the court.
• A connected joinder pursuant to Rule 340 RoP cannot result in the referral of an action to another division of the Court of First Instance beyond what is provided for in Article 33 UPCA (that is, an infringement action cannot be referred from an LD to the CD without the agreement of the parties involved).

• Aylo's preliminary objection that the infringement action be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction of the Mannheim LD was rejected by the Court of Appeal.
• The action related to a streaming service. It was found by the Court of Appeal that Article 7(2) in conjunction with Article 71b(1) of the recast Brussels Regulation must be interpreted as meaning that the UPC has international jurisdiction in respect of an infringement action where the European Patent relied on by the claimant has effect in at least one UPC contracting member state and the alleged damage may occur in that particular state. Where damage is allegedly caused via the internet, the likelihood of damage may arise from the possibility of acquiring products and/or using services from the website that is accessible in the UPC contracting member state where the European Patent has effect.
• The harmful event put forward by DISH and Sling in their statement of claim was that, through its websites, Aylo offers and supplies video files and media players to end-users in, inter alia, Germany, which, when operating on the end-user stations, perform the method claimed in the patent in suit.
• This was sufficient to establish the jurisdiction of the UPC pursuant to Article 7(2) in conjunction with Article 71b(1) of the recast Brussels Regulation, since (as was not disputed) the patent at issue has effect in, inter alia, Germany, and Aylo's websites are accessible in, inter alia, Germany.

• This decision concerned the second set of proceedings between Avago and Tesla, there were ongoing parallel proceeding before the Hamburg LD. Avago alleged that two Tesla entities infringed its patent relating to programmable hybrid transmitters by the sale of its Model Y vehicle, which contain a radar transmitter that is alleged to make use of the patent. Tesla counterclaimed that the patent was invalid.
• The Munich LD revoked Avago's patent in its entirety for lack of novelty and its infringement action was dismissed. The court confirmed the approach to novelty set out in DexCom v Abbott. Lack of novelty requires that the subject matter of the invention is directly and unambiguously derived from the state of the art. The disclosure of the state of the art publication is what an average skilled person in the relevant field can and is allowed to know and understand from the publication. Avago's attempt to amend the patent with an auxiliary request did not alter the court's conclusion on novelty.
• The court detailed how lists of features in a patent claim are to be interpreted. The court considered that the wording of the claim was to be interpreted as “at least one of A, and at least one of B, and at least one of C”. The use of the word "and" meant that the elements must all be present, whereas the use of the word "or" would indicate that elements were in the alternative.

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

• Hand Held Products brought an application for a preliminary injunction against Scandit. The application alleged that Scandit's software development kit allowed users to develop software that performed the patented functions and therefore infringed Hand Held Products' patent concerning barcode scanning technology.
• The preliminary injunction was awarded on the basis of indirect infringement of the patent. The court held that the software development kit more likely than not indirectly infringed the patent.
• Scandit argued that the kit did not implement the patented features directly, and that the kit required the user to carry out further customisations to infringe the patent. Scandit argued that any potential infringement was a result of the action of customers, rather than the kit itself.
• The court held that there was no direct infringement, but indirect infringement was likely. The kit provided the tools that allowed customers to develop software capable of infringing the patent. The kit had to be incorporated into the operating system of a device to be infringing or to be used for the claimed method. In coming to its decision, the court summarised the legal test for indirect infringement:

“A patent shall confer on its proprietor the right to prevent any third party not having the proprietor’s consent from supplying or offering to supply, within the territory of the Contracting Member States in which that patent has effect, any person other than a party entitled to exploit the patented invention, with means, relating to an essential element of that invention, for putting it into effect therein, when the third party knows, or should have known, that those means are suitable and intended for putting that invention into effect.”

• The Munich LD held that the kit was a means relating to an essential element of the invention, which allowed users to create a program that made literal use of the claimed invention. The court considered that Scandit had the necessary knowledge for indirect infringement by reference to videos and documentation published by it, which showed it was offered to customers to make use the patented invention.
• In light of the indirect infringement finding, the Munich LD stated that ordering the preliminary injunction was necessary as per Rule 206.2(c) RoP to prevent the continuation of the infringement or at least to prevent imminent infringement. Hand Held Products was also found to have acted with the requisite urgency and the weighing of interests favoured the grant of the preliminary injunction.
• Although the Munich LD noted that the disadvantages for Hand Held Products could not be compensated monetarily in the event of non-grant of the preliminary injunction, this was offset by the fact that Scandit also could not be compensated monetarily in the case of wrongful grant of the preliminary injunction. However, in this situation, the court stated that the interests of the patent proprietor are "regularly to be given preference". That was especially the case here as Scandit had conceded that the use of its kit was possible and still useful without the infringing functionality, and that adaptation of the kit was possible in principle.
• The court considered whether a relative prohibition, such as warnings to customers, would prevent further infringement. The court explained that in a case of indirect or contributory infringement, it must always be assessed whether a relative or absolute prohibition should be issued. Here, the court considered that Scandit could remove the disputed function from the kit by means of a software update. This update would not mean that the kit was unusable and the kit could still be used for non-infringing functionalities. However, the court noted that it would be much more difficult to control the behaviour of a large number of customers, especially as the software developed with Scandit's kit would mostly be used within the customers' internal operations. As such, the court held that an absolute prohibition was justified in the circumstances of this case.
• Scandit requested security for costs in the sum of €500,000, arguing that the hearing and proceedings for the recognition and enforcement of a foreign claim for damages in the USA (where Hand Held Products is located) would result in considerable legal costs, which, even if successful, would not have to be reimbursed by Hand Held Products. Hand Held Products did not comment on this request and therefore the court held the request to be undisputed under Rule 171.2 RoP. Accordingly, the Munich LD ordered Hand Held Products to pay the requested €500,000 security.

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

• Syngenta is the owner of a European patent covering a herbicide composition for controlling weeds. Syngenta brought an action for provisional measures against Sumi after Sumi obtained marketing authorisations for its product in several jurisdictions inside and outside the UPC.
• The court considered whether the marketing of a product with the same name outside the jurisdiction of the UPC would create an imminent risk of patent infringement inside the UPC jurisdiction. Sumi was advertising its product in the Czech Republic and Poland, but Syngenta later discovered that Sumi was also advertising within the jurisdiction of the UPC (including in Germany).
• Syngenta then applied for a preliminary injunction against Sumi in the UPC. Sumi argued that the product advertised in the UPC did not infringe the patent as it had a different composition to the version sold in the Czech Republic. Sumi also raised invalidity arguments against the patent and maintained that Syngenta had unreasonably delayed its preliminary injunction application.
• The Munich LD granted the preliminary injunction. The court explained that it was not possible to evaluate all invalidity arguments in preliminary injunction proceedings, and that consideration must be limited to the respondents' three most relevant arguments. The top three arguments did not convince the court that the patent was invalid.
• The court decided that although the product marketed in the UPC might differ, the fact that the brand name for the product within the UPC was the same as the infringing product outside the UPC presented a risk of imminent infringement within the UPC. The risk of imminent infringement was deemed to underscore the necessity of the preliminary injunction as required by Rule 206.2(c) RoP.
• Syngenta had been aware of the marketing authorisation granted in Germany in August 2023, and marketing started in January 2024. It then brought its application for provisional measures in April 2024. The Munich LD decided that the request was justified under Rule 206.22(c) RoP and found that the urgency requirement under Rules 209.2(b) and 211.4 RoP were met. The court explained that given the need to gather evidence across multiple jurisdictions, a two month safe harbour was appropriate for the applicant.
• The Munich LD lastly noted that the weighing of interests also favoured the grant of the preliminary injunction. The court particularly noted that the patent in suit expires in 2028 and denying the preliminary injunction would have deprived Syngenta of 20% of the remaining monopoly of the patent, which would amount to a substantial part of the commercial value.

• This decision concerned the first set of proceedings between Avago and Tesla, there were ongoing parallel proceedings before the Munich LD. Avago alleged that two Tesla entities infringed its patent relating to the control of the power supply of electronic circuits and their modules by the sale of the Tesla Model Y vehicle, which contains a computer with an infotainment processor that is alleged to make use of the patent. Tesla counterclaimed that the patent was invalid.
• The Hamburg LD confirmed that a patent can remain partially valid in the case where there are independent claims that the grounds of revocation do not extend to. Avago's patent was revoked to the extent that its subject matter went beyond claim 1 in auxiliary request 1. However, this meant that the patent claims were narrowed to such an extent that the court found that they were not infringed by Tesla.
• The court used the problem-solution approach to inventive step as a cross-check to the approach deployed in its analysis, concluding that the same outcome was reached on either approach.

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

• Amycel was granted a preliminary injunction against the defendant.
• The defendant argued that the patent's claim to mushroom strains contravened Article 53(b) EPC, which pertains to the exclusion of "plant or animal varieties" from patentability. The court pointed out that the exclusion concerns plant and animal varieties only and therefore does not encompass other organisms, such as mushrooms.
• Unreasonable delay in starting the proceedings, and consequently the possible lack of temporal urgency required for the ordering of provisional measures, only exists if the applicant has behaved in such a negligent and hesitant manner in requesting provisional measures after it became aware of the infringement of the patent that, from an objective perspective, it must be concluded that the applicant is not interested in promptly enforcing its rights.
• In assessing unreasonable delay, the court will take into account i) the burden of presentation and proof of facts needed to allegedly establish the applicant's entitlement to bring the proceedings and ii) the infringement or imminent infringement of its patent. This means that as soon as the applicant has knowledge of the alleged infringement, it must investigate it, take the necessary measures to clarify it and obtain the evidence needed to support its claims. In doing this, the applicant must initiate each of these steps in a timely manner and, as soon as the applicant has all the knowledge and evidence to enable it to start a "promising legal action", it must file its application for provisional measures without unreasonable delay.
• In this instance there was roughly a year's delay but, due to specific circumstances, the court did not find the delay unreasonable.

• Dexcom alleged that Abbott infringed its patent (EP 685) relating to glucose monitoring systems. Abbott did not dispute that its attacked products made use of the patent in issue; however, it contended that the patent lacked novelty or lacked inventive step.
• When first determining the person skilled in the art, the Munich LD left open the question of whether they should be defined as a single person or as a group of persons. In this case, the court held that the person must have knowledge in two fields: i) (physiological) analyte monitoring systems, and ii) knowledge in the art of designing portable electronic systems.
• In considering novelty, the Munich LD stated that the invention must be found "clearly integrally, directly and unambiguously in one single piece of prior art and in its existing form, it must be identical in its constitutive elements, in the same form, with the same arrangement and the same features". On this basis, the patent was not anticipated by the single piece of prior art considered.
• DexCom's patent was, however, revoked for lack of inventive step. It was determined that the prior art must first be of interest to a person skilled in the art who, at the priority date of the patent, was seeking to optimise upon the underlying technical problem. The Munich LD held that the underlying problem appeared to differ from the problem on which the EPO's Opposition Division based its decision. On the Munich LD's assessment, the prior art would have been of interest to the person skilled in the art and the invention disclosed in the patent would not have involved an inventive step over the prior art.

• Bitzer brought a revocation action against Carrier's patent (EP 708) relating to an apparatus and method for cold chain monitoring of perishable goods. The Paris CD maintained Carrier's patent as per its second auxiliary request.
• This was the first main action decision of the UPC to consider insufficiency. The claimant contended that the patent did not disclose the invention in a manner that was sufficiently clear and complete for it to be carried out by the skilled person. The court disagreed, holding that the skilled person, considering the patent disclosure, would be able to carry out the invention.
• The court held that a patent proprietor's right to amend its patent is limited to addressing only the claims that are under challenge in the action.

• In this case, Progress filed an application for preserving evidence and application for an inspection against AWM and Schnell in the Milan LD. The Milan LD granted both of the applications. Progress filed a request to access the expert reports after the measures had been carried out, which AWM and Schnell resisted. The Milan LD denied Progress access to the reports on the grounds of inadmissibility, as the request was made nearly four months after the measures were carried out. It also revoked the measures and ordered restitution of the evidence to AWM and Schnell. Progress appealed.
• The Court of Appeal confirmed that an application for the preservation of evidence or inspection of premises within the meaning of Article 60 UPCA and Rule 192 RoP et seq. implies a request to disclose the outcome of the measures to the applicant, including the report written by the person who carried them out. This follows from the fact that the legitimate purpose of the measures is the use of the evidence in proceedings on the merits, which includes use of the evidence to decide whether to initiate the case and to decide whether and to what extent the evidence will be submitted in the proceedings.
• However, this does not mean that there is an unconditional order to disclose evidence to the applicant. Under Article 60(1) UPCA, the order must be subject to the protection of confidential information. Where the evidence may contain confidential information, the court must hear the other party before deciding whether and to what extent to disclose. The court must give the other party access to the evidence and provide them with the opportunity to request protection of confidential information.
• Pursuant to Article 60(8) UPCA, the court must ensure that measures to preserve evidence or to inspect premises are revoked or cease to have effect, at the defendant's request, if the applicant does not bring an action on the merits within a period not exceeding 31 calendar days or 20 working days (whichever is longer). Rules 198.1 and .2 RoP specify that the time period for commencing an action on the merits under Article 60(8) runs from the date specified in the court's order, taking into account the date when the report on the measures is to be given to the applicant. Therefore, the Court of Appeal states that, as a general principle, the court must specify in its order when the time period starts to run.
• In this case, the Court of Appeal set aside the Milan LD's decision to revoke the measures and dismissal of Progress' application for disclosure and the restitution that was based on the revocation of the measures. The Court of Appeal referred the case back to the Milan LD to reconsider Progress' request to make the reports of the expert who carried out the measures available to its representatives. This was the case because the merits of Progress' request and any potential confidentiality issues had not been discussed between the parties. The Milan LD was therefore instructed to address Progress' request in accordance with the principles set out in this decision, including giving AWM and Schnell access to the report to assess confidentiality.

• Meril's revocation action against Edwards Lifesciences relating to its patent concerning a prosthetic heart valve (EP 825) was rejected. Meril had separately filed counterclaims for revocation in an infringement action brought against them by Edwards Lifesciences in the Munich LD. The Munich LD decided that the counterclaims raised similar grounds of invalidity to the revocation action and, as such, ordered that the counterclaims be referred to the Paris CD for determination pursuant to Article 33(3)(b) UPCA.
• Meril alleged that the patent was invalid for several reasons: extension of subject matter beyond the application originally filed (Edwards Lifesciences had filed an application to amend its patent with its defence to revocation), lack of enabling disclosure, lack of novelty and lack of inventive step.
• In considering inventive step, the Paris CD carried out its assessment in accordance with Article 56 EPC, noting that it is "necessary to determine whether, given the state of the art, a person skilled in the art would have arrived at the technical solution claimed by the patent using their technical knowledge and carrying out simple operations. Inventive step is assessed in terms of the specific problem encountered by the person skilled in the art".
• In this case, although hexagonal cells were disclosed in the prior art at the time of the application, they were only used in combination with (intermediate) rhombic cells. The court found that the mere use of hexagonal cells in the frame of a heart valve did not lead to the conclusion that it would be obvious to the skilled person to employ a frame entirely made of hexagonal cells to address the problem. Thus, it concluded that the prior art teachings on heart valves and the structure of their frame would not have provided any motivation for the skilled person to alter the shape of (some of) the cells to an all-hexagonal configuration.
• The Paris CD also considered prior art in the stent field relating to hexagonal cells, as Meril had pointed out that catheter-based prosthetic valves were developed by combining the technology of valves with leaflets with the frame technology used in vascular stents. Even considering this, the Paris CD held that it would not be obvious to the skilled person versed in both technologies to solve the technical problem.
• As a final remark, the Paris CD stated that the EPO problem-solution approach  (finding the closest prior art, defining the technical problem and considering whether the claimed invention, starting from the closest prior art and the technical problem, would have been obvious to the skilled person)  was not mandatory. Indeed, the court did not apply it here; however, it noted that applying the problem-solution approach would not have produced a different outcome in this case.
• In considering added matter, the Paris CD stated that a European divisional patent application may only be filed with respect to subject matter that does not extend beyond the content of the earlier filed application. Such an extension can occur if the subject matter cannot be directly and unambiguously made out from the earlier application by the skilled person. An undue extension may result from an amendment to the claims or description that consist of an "intermediate generalisation". The Paris CD defined intermediate generalisation as “extracting one or more isolated features which, in the initial application, were disclosed only in combination with other features, thereby extending the claimed subject matter, which is no longer limited to this initial combination of features”. The court had found added matter with regard to the intermediate generalisation of a feature (1.5) as a result of the omission of a complete definition. However, Edwards Lifesciences' second auxiliary request overcame the issue.

• Amgen's patent was revoked for lack of inventive step.
• The Munich CD did not use the problem-solution approach when assessing inventive step. Instead, the court stated that there can be several promising starting points, and that it is not necessary to identify the most promising starting point. A claimed solution is obvious if the skilled person would be motivated to consider the claimed solution and to implement it as a "next step" in developing the prior art. On the other hand, if the claimed subject matter achieves a technical effect or advantage compared to the prior art, this may be indicative of the presence of an inventive step.
• For priority, a claimed invention is considered the "same invention" according to Article 87 EPC if the skilled person can derive the subject-matter of the claim directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, from the previous application as a whole.

• DexCom's patent was revoked for lack of inventive step, even though the patent had survived EPO opposition proceedings.
• The Paris LD considered that the skilled person could be defined as a group.
• When assessing novelty, the court stated that "[i]n order to be considered part of the state of the art, an invention must be found integrally, directly and unambiguously in one single piece of prior art…".
• Inventive step was assessed using the problem-solution approach.
• DexCom's infringement action was dismissed.

• This was the first decision on the merits from the UPC. Franz Kaldewei's patent (after auxiliary request) was held to be valid and infringed. As such, the first permanent injunction was granted by the UPC.
• The Düsseldorf LD ordered disclosure of information on the extent of infringement, recall and removal of the infringing products, payment in respect of costs and provisional damages.
• The court took an EPO-style approach to claim construction, following the Court of Appeal's decision in 10x Genomics v Nanostring.
• Bette raised a defence of right of prior use but this was rejected. Article 28 UPCA is to be interpreted narrowly:  the defendant must prove a right of prior use for each member state where the defence is claimed.

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

• Alexion asserted its European patent (EP 888) against Samsung Bioepis and Amgen, seeking provisional measures to prevent the marketing and launch of their respective biosimilar products to eculizumab (Soliris).
• The asserted claim (claim 2) covers a pharmaceutical composition comprising an anti C5 antibody with a heavy chain consisting of SEQ ID NO:2 and a light chain consisting of SEQ ID NO:4. SEQ ID NO:4 is disclosed in the patent as including a 22 amino acid N-terminal signal peptide sequence.
• Applying Article 69 EPC and the Protocol, the court interpreted the claim from the skilled person’s perspective, taking the claim’s purpose into account (to provide a therapeutic that binds C5). The Hamburg LD concluded that although SEQ ID NO:4 in the specification includes an N terminal signal peptide, the skilled person would construe the claim as referring to the mature light chain without the first 22 amino acids, using common general knowledge (and readily available tools/databases) to recognise and locate the signal peptide.
• On that construction, Samsung's and Amgen's product were held to more likely than not to infringe claim 2.
• Notwithstanding the infringement analysis, under Article 62(4) UPCA and Rule 211.2 RoP, the court must also be sufficiently convinced of the patent’s validity. Crucially, where an EPO opposition is pending, a decision on provisional measures cannot rest solely on the court’s own validity view, if an opposition is pending at the EPO the court must also factor in the likelihood of invalidation by the EPO (citing previous Court of Appeal guidance, including Rule 209(2) RoP).
• The EPO Board of Appeal had allowed grant only on a claim set that literally included SEQ ID NO:4 with the signal peptide, and had previously rejected attempts to “correct” SEQ ID NO:4 under Rule 139 EPC across the family. In the UPC proceedings, Alexion accepted that an antibody including the signal peptide would be non functional and not a usable pharmaceutical. On that understanding, the court found it reasonably likely that the EPO would find the granted claim insufficiently disclosed under Article 83 EPC and revoke the patent.
• The court therefore dismissed Alexion's application for provisional measures, finding that the validity of the patent was not sufficiently certain due to potential revocation by the EPO.
• The decision for Samsung Bioepis is available in full here.

• Mala is the proprietor of a European patent valid only in Germany. In 2021, Nokia Solutions filed a national revocation action in the German Federal Patent Court. In July 2023, the German Federal Patent Court dismissed the German revocation action and upheld the patent in its entirety. The full written decision was served on the parties on 13 and 14 December 2023.
• On 15 December 2023, Nokia Technology filed a revocation against Mala before the Paris CD in relation to the same patent. On the same day, Nokia Solutions filed an appeal again the decision of the German Federal Patent Court.
• On the following day, Mala filed a preliminary objection in the revocation action before the UPC contesting the jurisdiction of the court and, on an auxiliary basis, if the court did not decline jurisdiction then the proceedings be stayed until the final decision in the German national litigation or stayed pending a final decision on its preliminary objection.
• At first instance, the Paris CD rejected Mala's preliminary objection and its request to stay the proceedings. Mala appealed the decision.
• The Court of Appeal held that Mala’s stay request pending the final decision of its preliminary objection was inadmissible because its statement of appeal and grounds did not set out reasons for a stay as per Rule 21.2 RoP. The court noted that arguments raised for the first time at the interim conference cannot cure a lack of reasoning. An interim conference may clarify written grounds, but it is not a substitute for them, particularly given the respondent’s right to prepare its defence. In any event, Mala's arguments put forth at the interim conference were rejected on the merits. As a general rule, the main proceedings are not stayed pending the decision of the Court of Appeal on an order rejecting a preliminary objection. This follows the principle underlying Rule 19.6 RoP and Article 74(1) UPCA, that proceedings before the Court of First Instance must, as far as possible, continue unhindered by any (procedural) appeals.
• The Court of Appeal may grant a stay in exceptional circumstances, having regard to the circumstances of the case, for example the stage of the revocation proceedings before the Court of First Instance, the stage of the appeal proceedings, and the interests of the parties.
• In this case, the revocation proceedings were at the final stage of the written procedure, with the time limit due to expire by 21 July 2024. In this appeal, the written procedure had closed and the oral hearing was to be held on 24 July 2024. It was therefore anticipated that the Court of Appeal's decision would be issued before the oral hearing in the revocation proceedings. The limited additional effort and cost – especially for Mala – did not outweigh Nokia Technology’s interest in a prompt validity decision.