Industria Lombarda Materiale Elettrico v Phoenix Contact (CoA, 31 March 2025)

Date	31 March 2025
Court	CoA
Division	Luxembourg (LU)
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_15086/2025 · ORD_15367/2025
Parties	Industria Lombarda Materiale Elettrico I.L.M.E. S.p.A., ILME GmbH Elektrotechnische Handelsgesellschaft

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 31 March 2025 (UPC_CoA_170/2025, APL_9192/2025), Judge-rapporteur Emmanuel Gougé of the Court of Appeal rejected the request filed on 27 March 2025 by ILME GmbH and Industria Lombarda Materiale Elettrico I.L.M.E. S.p.A. for a stay of Phoenix Contact’s infringement action on EP 3 646 825 and of their counterclaim for revocation, pending before the Munich Local Division (UPC_CFI_342/2024). They had appealed on 24 February 2025 against the order of 10 February 2025 rejecting their objection to jurisdiction. The hearing before the local division is set for 17 June 2025.

Question

Should first-instance proceedings be stayed while an appeal against the rejection of a preliminary objection to jurisdiction is pending (Rule 21.2 RoP)?

Decision

An appeal against orders under Rules 220.2, 220.3 and 221.3 RoP has no suspensive effect (Rule 223.5 RoP) (paragraph 4). On a reasoned request, the judge-rapporteur or the Court of Appeal may stay the proceedings where an appeal lies against a decision on a preliminary objection (Rule 21.2 RoP) (paragraph 5), weighing the principles of the Agreement and the Rules, including efficiency and cost-effectiveness (Preamble, paragraph 4), against the circumstances of the case (paragraph 6). Given the appeal timetable and the scheduled hearing date, neither justice nor efficiency required a stay. The Court will instead aim to decide jurisdiction before the merits hearing, with the parties’ cooperation (Preamble, paragraph 7, and Rule 332(a) RoP) (paragraphs 7 and 8).

Key points for practice

Practical point: rather than staying the merits, the Court of Appeal seeks to rule on jurisdiction before the first-instance hearing, so a party contesting jurisdiction should expect a tight appeal timetable.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Preamble, Rules 19, 21.2, 220.2, 220.3, 221.3, 223.5 and 332(a)
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: 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.

First instance cited in the decision: UPC_CFI_342/2024

Parties

claimantILME GmbH Elektrotechnische Handelsgesellschaft4 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
claimantIndustria Lombarda Materiale Elettrico I.L.M.E. S.p.A.4 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 demande de sursis de l'instance au fond pendant l'appel sur la compétence est rejetée. La cour d'appel s'efforcera de statuer avant l'audience du 17 juin 2025.
Appeal: Decision of the Court of Appeal (first instance cited: UPC_CFI_342/2024).
Instance: Court of Appeal decision.

Patents mentioned

EP 3 646 825 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

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 3 646 825` A system comprising a prosthetic valve and a delivery catheter recorded proprietor: Edwards Lifesciences Corp	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 32 other decision(s): Edwards Lifesciences v Meril Life Sciences (CFI, 15 November 2024) · Meril Italy v Edwards Lifesciences (CFI, 19 July 2024) · Meril v Edwards Lifesciences (CFI, 19 July 2024) · Meril Italy v Edwards Lifesciences (CoA, 25 November 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Sintec (CFI, 5 September 2025) · Meril Italy v SWAT Medical (CoA, 5 May 2025) · Meril v SWAT Medical (CoA, 5 May 2025) · Meril Life Sciences v SWAT Medical (CoA, 5 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

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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