Meril Italy v Edwards Lifesciences (CFI, 23 September 2024)

Date	23 September 2024
Court	CFI
Division	Paris (FR) Central Division - Seat
Type of action	Application RoP262.1 (b)
Registry reference	App_33484/2024 · ORD_36092/2024
Parties	KIPA AB

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 an order of 23 September 2024 (UPC_CFI_189/2024, ACT_22275/2024, App_33484/2024, ORD_36092/2024), the judge-rapporteur of panel 2 of the Paris Central Division (P. Catallozzi) refused a request for access to all written pleadings and evidence in the action for revocation of EP 4 151 181 brought by Meril Italy srl, Meril GmbH and Meril Life Sciences Pvt Ltd against Edwards Lifesciences Corporation. The request came from SWAT Medical AB and an individual describing himself as a board member and investor. The order makes clear that the interest relied on by a third party must be shown, not merely asserted.

Question

Can a third party claiming to be a competitor with an interest in the patent’s validity obtain access, under Rule 262.1(b), to the pleadings and evidence of pending proceedings?

Decision

Openness is the principle (Art. 10(1) and Art. 45 UPCA), subject to a balancing against the interests of the parties and third parties, the integrity of the proceedings and public order (paragraphs 8 to 11). The applicant must state the purpose of the request and why the documents are needed (paragraph 12). A competitor or licensee may have a direct interest in validity, including while proceedings are pending (paragraph 13), but being active in the same field is not enough: the applicant had not shown that it competed with the parties (paragraphs 14 and 15). A general interest in information does not outweigh the protection of the integrity of the pending proceedings (paragraphs 16 and 17), nor the protection of personal interests (paragraph 18).

Key points for practice

Practical point: a third party relying on its status as a competitor must substantiate it, while proceedings are pending, a general interest in information yields to their integrity.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 10(1) and Art. 45
Rules of Procedure: Rule 262.1(b)
Case law cited: Ocado Innovation v Autostore, Court of Appeal, 10 April 2024, Vienna Local Division, 12 August 2024, UPC_CFI_33/2024, Nordic-Baltic Regional Division, 17 September 2024, UPC_CFI_8/2023

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), Confidentiality club.

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

claimantKIPA AB8 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: Application RoP262.1 (b)
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La demande d'accès aux écritures et pièces est rejetée : la qualité de concurrent n'est pas établie et l'intérêt général d'information ne l'emporte pas sur l'intégrité de la procédure en cours.
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 4 151 181 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Ocado Innovation v Autostore (CoA, 10 April 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 4 151 181`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 4 other decision(s): Meril Life Sciences v Edwards Lifesciences (CFI, 20 October 2025) · Meril Italy v SWAT Medical (CFI, 8 January 2025) · Edwards Lifesciences v Meril Life Sciences (CFI, 8 October 2024) · Meril Life Sciences v Edwards Lifesciences (CFI, 17 September 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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