Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 29 July 2024)

Date	29 July 2024
Court	CFI
Division	Munich (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Infringement Action
Registry reference	ACT_597277/2023 · ORD_598411/2023
Parties	Edwards Lifesciences Corporation v. Meril GmbH, Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., Meril Italy S.r.l.

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

In an order of 29 July 2024 (UPC_CFI_501/2023), the judge-rapporteur of the Munich Local Division set the timetable for Edwards Lifesciences’ infringement action against Meril GmbH, Meril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd. and Meril Italy S.r.l. under EP 3 669 828: an interim conference by videoconference in 2024, an in-person oral hearing in 2025 and closure of the written procedure on 4 November 2024. Counsel for the defendants had sought a postponement on account of parental leave. The order shows how the Division reconciles the aim of a first-instance decision within one year of service with the right to be represented by counsel of one’s choice. The published text does not give the day or month of the interim conference or of the hearing.

Question

Can the hearing timetable be adjusted to accommodate the unavailability of the defendants’ lead representative, given the aim of concluding first-instance proceedings within one year?

Decision

The judge weighed the aim of a decision within one year of service against the right to a fair trial, which includes representation by counsel of choice. As no other hearing date was feasible, he adopted the 2025 date chosen by the defendants and scheduled the interim conference so that their counsel could attend. Since the last defendant was served on 7 February 2024, he considered the one-year target still achievable.

Key points for practice

Practical point: a request to postpone based on lead counsel’s unavailability may be accommodated, but by adjusting the timetable within the one-year horizon, not by an open-ended postponement.

Provisions applied

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.

Decisions in the same proceedings

Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 2024-12-20), 20 December 2024
Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 2025-02-05), 5 February 2025
Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 2025-04-04), 4 April 2025

Going further

Lexicon: Patent infringement action.

Publications by Matthieu Dhenne: Pleading the Long Arm: What a UPC Statement of Claim Must Carry Beyond Jurisdiction (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.

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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

claimantEdwards Lifesciences Corporation41 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantMeril GmbH45 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantMeril Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd.normalised name: Meril Life Sciences Pvt Ltd.32 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantMeril Italy S.r.l.normalised name: Meril Italy srl19 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: Infringement Action
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): Le juge-rapporteur fixe l’audience en 2025 à la date choisie par les défenderesses, dont le conseil est en congé parental, et clôt la procédure écrite le 4 novembre 2024, l’objectif d’un an restant tenable.
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 3 669 828 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 4 April 2025) cited in this record
Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 5 February 2025) cited in this record
Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 20 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 3 669 828` Prosthetic heart valve recorded proprietor: Edwards Lifesciences Corp	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 11 other decision(s): Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 4 April 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 12 August 2026) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 26 June 2026) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 17 October 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 3 June 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 14 April 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, ORD_60824/2024, 9 April 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril (CFI, 5 February 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

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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