Nicoventures Trading v Juul Labs (CoA, ORD_13786/2025, 25 April 2025)

Date	25 April 2025
Court	CoA
Division	Luxembourg (LU)
Type of action	Application RoP262.1 (b)
Registry reference	App_13365/2025 · ORD_13786/2025
Parties	Nicoventures Trading Limited

Official decision (PDF) · UPC registry entry

Dhenne Avocats represents claimants and defendants in European patent disputes before the Unified Patent Court, including the Paris divisions.

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Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By an order of 25 April 2025 (UPC_CoA_5/2025), the judge-rapporteur of the Court of Appeal granted Nicoventures Trading, an opponent before the EPO, immediate access to five pleadings and exhibits in Juul Labs’ appeal against the Paris Central Division’s decision of 5 November 2024 revoking EP 3 498 115 at the suit of NJOY Netherlands, including the statement of grounds of appeal and an exhibit containing auxiliary requests. Access is conditional on not filing those documents with other courts, including the EPO Boards of Appeal, until the appeal ends.

Question

Which documents in a pending appeal may an EPO opponent obtain, and subject to what conditions of use?

Decision

A request may cover documents lodged after it was filed but before the parties comment, such as the statement of grounds and Exhibit TP-15, which were on file when the parties responded on 31 March 2025 (paragraphs 9 and 11). A blanket request for future or unspecified documents is inadmissible (paragraphs 10 and 12). Nicoventures’ direct interest as a party to the opposition justified immediate access (paragraph 13). The risk of copying into public EPO briefs was addressed by a condition imposed of the Court’s own motion, following Ocado: no filing or distribution of the pleadings until the appeal closes, while the arguments and prior art may still be used (paragraphs 14 and 15). Nicoventures may not comment on the parties’ submissions (paragraph 16).

Key points for practice

An access request should list the documents sought. Those lodged before the parties comment can be obtained if the request clearly covered them.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 45
Rules of Procedure: Rules 262.1(b) and 262.2
Other provisions: Regulation (EU) 2016/679
Case law cited: Ocado v Autostore, Court of Appeal, 10 April 2024 (UPC_CoA_404/2023)

Related decisions

Juul Labs v NJOY, Court of Appeal, 30 April 2025, stay of the appeal pending the EPO decision

Prepared by Dhenne Avocats from the official decision, consulted on 10 October 2026. The database is updated every week, on Friday. Only the official text is authoritative.

Going further

Lexicon: UPC Court of Appeal.

Dhenne Avocats blog: UPC Appeals: What the Numbers Show.

Source and translations

Official source: Unified Patent Court registry link recorded in the record
Original language: not recorded
Translation available: no translation recorded the firm’s French record is a summary, not a translation
Date checked: not recorded

Only the official text is authoritative. A machine translation is never presented as official, republishing a third-party document requires a verified basis in rights, and a link to the source is preferred.

Follow this case

Proceedings, related decisions, appeals, parties and patents as recorded in the registry and in the Dhenne Avocats corpus. Each link states its source.

Proceedings

No case number recorded in this record.

Parties

claimantNicoventures Trading Limited4 decisions in the corpus Follow this party

Exact name as it appears in the record, group affiliation only where sourced and dated.

Decisions in the same proceedings and documented appeals

No other decision in the corpus bears the same case number, and no appeal is documented in the corpus to date.

What the record states

Nature of the act: Application RoP262.1 (b)
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): Nicoventures obtient l'accès à cinq écritures et pièces de l'appel de Juul Labs, sans pouvoir les produire devant d'autres juridictions avant la fin de l'appel. Le surplus est rejeté.
Appeal: Decision of the Court of Appeal.
Instance: Court of Appeal decision.

Patents mentioned

EP 3 498 115 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Juul Labs v NJOY Netherlands (CoA, 30 April 2025) cited in this record
Ocado Innovation v Autostore (CoA, 10 April 2024) cited in this record

Scope: Dhenne Avocats corpus. Registry-based links are marked “official number”; links derived from the analyses are marked as such. An erroneous link can be withdrawn without deleting any record.

Patents and standards

Publication	Role in the dispute	Family	Standard and declaration	Pool	Sources
`EP 3 498 115`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 5 other decision(s): NJOY Netherlands v Juul Labs (CFI, ORD_598482/2023, 5 November 2024) · Juul Labs International v NJOY Netherlands (CoA, UPC_CoA_5/2025, 9 Jan · NJOY Netherlands v Juul Labs International (CFI, 9 June 2025) · Juul Labs v NJOY Netherlands (CoA, 30 April 2025) · NJOY Netherlands v Juul Labs International (CFI, 17 January 2025)	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet links not checked mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis

The statuses “asserted in litigation”, “declared essential”, “listed by a pool” and “essentiality examined by a court” are distinct and may coexist. Validity, infringement and technical essentiality are different questions. Scope: patents cited in the decisions of the Dhenne Avocats corpus, with no essentiality score or prediction.

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