Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 17 April 2025)

Date	17 April 2025
Court	CFI
Division	The Hague (NL) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_18039/2025 · ORD_18458/2025
Parties	Arbutus Biopharma Corporation, Genevant Sciences GmbH

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 order of 16 April 2025 (UPC_CFI_191/2025 and UPC_CFI_192/2025, ORD_18458/2025), issued in both related actions, Judge-rapporteur Kokke of The Hague Local Division refused to extend the time limit for preliminary objections and set a single deadline of 8 July 2025 for the statement of defence of the fifteen Moderna group companies sued by Genevant Sciences and Arbutus Biopharma for infringement of EP 2 279 254 and EP 4 241 767. The single deadline is a limited extension for most applicants and a shortening for the defendants not yet served (paragraph 19).

Question

May the court, for a group of defendants served at different times, refuse to extend the time limit for preliminary objections and set a common deadline for the defence?

Decision

Preliminary objections, confined to jurisdiction and competence and specific to each defendant, do not call for a common deadline. No common objection (opt-out, language) was at issue, so each defendant keeps the Rule 19.1 time limit (paragraph 11). A single deadline for the defence serves efficiency, given the aim of a decision within 12 to 14 months (paragraphs 12 and 13). The defendants, all in one group, are taken to know of the claims, and the refusal of service on the US companies on 1 April 2025 may reflect an attempt to delay (paragraph 14). Neither the technical complexity, not shown to be exceptional and familiar to Moderna from its opposition against EP 2 279 254, nor parallel litigation justifies an extension (paragraphs 15 and 16).

Key points for practice

Practical point: a defendant group cannot rely on staggered service of its subsidiaries to lengthen the timetable, the court may impose a common deadline, shorter for some of them.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rules 9.2, 19.1, 23, 271.6 and 275.2
Case law cited: No UPC decision is cited.

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: Supplementary protection certificate (SPC), Biosimilar medicinal product, Launch at risk.

Dhenne Avocats blog: Pharmaceutical patents and the UPC: is the Court hostile to them?.

Publications by Matthieu Dhenne: The Launch Letter: How Generics and Biosimilars Should Write to Avoid UPC Urgency (Kluwer Patent Blog).

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

claimantGenevant Sciences GmbH5 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
claimantArbutus Biopharma Corporation6 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: Generic application
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La prorogation du délai des exceptions préliminaires est refusée et un délai commun de défense est fixé au 8 juillet 2025 pour toutes les défenderesses.
Appeal: No appeal documented in the corpus, this does not mean that no appeal was lodged.
Instance: First-instance decision, whether it has become final is not recorded.

Patents mentioned

EP 2 279 254 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent
EP 4 241 767 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Genevant Sciences (CFI, 17 April 2025) cites this decision

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 2 279 254` Novel lipid formulations for nucleic acid delivery recorded proprietor: Arbutus Biopharma Corp	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 7 other decision(s): Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, UPC_CFI_191/2025, 25 August 2026) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 18 August 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 13 August 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 4 August 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 12 June 2025) · Moderna v Genevant Sciences (CFI, 4 June 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 23 May 2025)	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet · European Patent Register existence and title of the publication checked on 30 October 2026 (Google Patents, Espacenet and Register links are not checked automatically) mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis
`EP 4 241 767`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 5 other decision(s): Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, UPC_CFI_192/2025, 25 August 2026) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 18 August 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 12 June 2025) · Moderna v Genevant Sciences (CFI, 4 June 2025) · Genevant Sciences v Moderna (CFI, 23 May 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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