Nicoventures Trading v NJOY Netherlands (CoA, 25 April 2025)

Date	25 April 2025
Court	CoA
Division	Luxembourg (LU)
Type of action	Application RoP262.1 (b)
Registry reference	App_13352/2025 · ORD_13796/2025
Parties	Nicoventures Trading Limited

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 25 April 2025 (UPC_CoA_7/2025, APL_322/2025, App_13352/2025), Judge-rapporteur Simonsson (Court of Appeal, Panel 2) granted Nicoventures Trading immediate access to five pleadings and exhibits in NJOY Netherlands’ appeal against an order of the Paris Central Division of 5 November 2024 in its revocation action against Juul Labs International concerning EP 3 504 991 (UPC_CFI_315/2023). Nicoventures, an opponent of that patent before the EPO, whose Opposition Division revoked it on 24 November 2023, wishes to use the documents in the pending EPO appeal. Access is subject to a ban on filing the pleadings elsewhere until the appeal is closed.

Question

May an opponent before the EPO obtain immediate access to pleadings in a pending UPC appeal, and if so to which documents and on what conditions?

Decision

Under Rule 262.1(b), the applicant’s interest is weighed against the general interests in Art. 45 UPCA. A direct and legitimate interest, such as a competitor’s interest in the validity of the patent, justifies immediate access (paragraphs 7 and 8). The request for the listed documents was admissible, whereas requests covering future or unidentified documents were not (paragraphs 9 to 12). Nicoventures’ interest met the criteria (paragraph 13). Relying on Ocado, the judge imposed of her own motion a ban on filing the pleadings with other courts, including the EPO Boards of Appeal, or distributing them until the appeal is closed, while Nicoventures remains free to use the arguments and prior art (paragraphs 14 and 15).

Key points for practice

Practical point: an EPO opponent may learn the arguments run before the UPC, but may not put the pleadings themselves on the EPO appeal file until the UPC appeal is closed.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 45
Rules of Procedure: Rules 262.1(b) and 262.2
Other provisions: Regulation (EU) 2016/679
Case law cited: Ocado Innovation v Autostore, Court of Appeal, 10 April 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: 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.

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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.

First instance cited in the decision: UPC_CFI_315/2023

Parties

claimantNicoventures Trading Limited4 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): L'accès immédiat à cinq écritures identifiées est accordé à l'opposant devant l'OEB, à condition de ne pas les produire ailleurs avant la clôture de l'appel. La demande portant sur des documents futurs ou non identifiés est irrecevable.
Appeal: Decision of the Court of Appeal (first instance cited: UPC_CFI_315/2023).
Instance: Court of Appeal decision.

Patents mentioned

EP 3 504 991 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 3 504 991`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): NJOY Netherlands v Juul Labs (CFI, ORD_598483/2023, 5 November 2024) · NJOY Netherlands v Juul Labs International (CoA, 23 May 2025)	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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