Dexcom v Abbott Laboratories (CFI, 19 December 2023)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 19 December 2023 (UPC_CFI_230/2023, ACT_546446/2023), the judge-rapporteur of the Paris Local Division granted Abbott’s confidentiality requests concerning its statement of defence in the infringement action on DexCom’s EP 3 435 866: the redacted passages are withheld from the public and restricted to a defined circle on DexCom’s side, subject to a penalty of up to EUR 50,000 per breach. The order shows how a wider confidentiality club can be arranged where several parallel proceedings are pending between the same parties.

Question

Abbott asked for sensitive information in its statement of defence, including sales and revenue figures, to be excluded from the public register (Rule 262.2) and for access to be restricted (Rule 262A). DexCom accepted the principle but sought wider access, citing the imbalance between its two representatives and the defendants’ eleven, the need to coordinate with parallel proceedings, and the role of support staff.

Decision

The redacted information remains confidential. On DexCom’s side, access is granted to its representatives and their CMS legal team in these proceedings and in the parallel proceedings before the Paris and Munich Local Divisions, after signing a non-disclosure agreement, to three named individuals, and to experts and witnesses bound by such an agreement. Use of the information is confined to those proceedings, including after they end. Since part of the information had already been disclosed without confidentiality in German proceedings, the penalty cap was set at EUR 50,000 rather than EUR 250,000.

Key points for practice

• A confidentiality club may extend to the teams involved in parallel proceedings before other divisions, subject to non-disclosure agreements.
• Prior disclosure of the information before a national court leads to a lower penalty cap.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Art. 58

Rules of Procedure

Rules 220.2, 262.2, 262.5, 262A and 333

Other provisions

Directive (EU) 2016/943 on the protection of trade secrets, Art. 9(3)

Case law cited

None.

Related decisions

• Dexcom v Abbott Laboratories, 30 January 2024, request for review of the penalty cap dismissed.

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.