CRETES v HYLER (CFI, 20 February 2025)

Date	20 February 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Brussels (BE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_6987/2025 · ORD_7825/2025
Parties	Cretes NV

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 20 February 2025 (UPC_CFI_216/2024 and UPC_CFI_556/2024, ACT_25743/2024, ORD_7825/2025), the Brussels Local Division (Judges Granata, Kupecz, Voss and Ledeboer) declined to disregard HYLER’s rejoinder filed one day late, but excluded the new arguments, exhibit and claim for a declaration of non-infringement it contained, in CRETES’s infringement action (EP 3 993 602 and EP 4 284 152) and the joined counterclaim for revocation. A minor delay is tolerated. A change in the subject matter of the dispute is not.

Question

Must a rejoinder filed one day late be disregarded, and can it introduce new product variants and a claim for a declaration of non-infringement?

Decision

The parties had validly replaced the statutory time limits with a date-based schedule (paragraphs 17 to 19). HYLER’s delay of about one day prejudiced neither CRETES’s rights nor the timetable, and CRETES objected only on 11 February, which the division did not regard as procedurally fair: the main request was dismissed (paragraphs 20 to 23).

By contrast, the claim for a declaration of non-infringement and the arguments on new FL20 variants changed the nature and scope of the dispute. They required leave under Rule 263, which was not sought, and should have been raised in the Statement of Defence given the front-loaded nature of the proceedings (Rules 24 and 29(c)) (paragraphs 28 to 34). Paragraphs 506 to 510 and exhibit I.21 were disregarded at this stage.

Key points for practice

A slight delay causing no prejudice does not justify excluding a pleading.
Practical point: new product variants or a new counterclaim require an application for leave under Rule 263, not mere insertion into the rejoinder.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 32(1)(b)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 9, 24, 29(c), 263 and 300(c)
Case law cited: Court of Appeal, 21 November 2024 (UPC_CoA_456/2024), Tandem Diabetes Care v Roche Diabetes Care, Paris Central Division, 18 December 2024.

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: Written procedure (UPC), Court fees and costs (UPC).

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

claimantCretes NV4 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 duplique tardive d'un jour est maintenue, faute de préjudice, mais les arguments sur de nouvelles variantes, la pièce I.21 et la demande en déclaration de non-contrefaçon sont écartés faute d'autorisation au titre de la règle 263.
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 3 993 602 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent
EP 4 284 152 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Tandem Diabetes Care Europe v Roche Diabetes Care (CFI, 18 December 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 3 993 602`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): Cretes v Hyler (CFI, 7 October 2025) · Cretes v Hyler (CFI, 25 October 2024)	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet links not checked mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis
`EP 4 284 152`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): Cretes v Hyler (CFI, 7 October 2025) · Cretes v Hyler (CFI, 25 October 2024)	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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