Novartis v ZENTIVA PORTUGAL (CFI, 31 July 2025)

Date	31 July 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Milan (IT) Central Division- Section
Type of action	Application For Costs
Registry reference	ORD_24048/2025
Parties	Novartis AG v. ZENTIVA PORTUGAL, LDA, ZENTIVA K.S.

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 a decision of 31 July 2025 (UPC_CFI_382/2025), the judge-rapporteur of the Milan Central Division ruled on the costs claimed by Novartis from ZENTIVA K.S. and ZENTIVA PORTUGAL following the dismissal, on 21 March 2025, of their application to intervene in an action concerning EP 2 501 384. Novartis sought EUR 38,000, the amount of the ceiling. It was awarded only EUR 3,000, the sum Zentiva did not contest. The decision clarifies the burden of proving costs once the court asks for evidence.

Question

May a party awarded costs simply rely on the ceiling and a declaration by its in-house counsel, while declining to disclose the breakdown of its costs on confidentiality grounds?

Decision

No. Costs must be reasonable, meaning necessary, and proportionate. The ceiling is a general safeguard, not a flat rate (paragraphs 9 to 12). Once the judge-rapporteur requests evidence under Rule 156.1 RoP, the burden of proof applies in full. On this point the judge departs from the Munich Local Division’s position in SSAB v Tiroler Rohre (paragraphs 13 to 24). The declaration of Novartis’s in-house counsel, without invoices, does not meet that standard, since assessing reasonableness cannot be delegated to a party (paragraphs 25 to 29). Confidentiality cannot be invoked against the court: Rule 262A RoP protects against disclosure to third parties (paragraph 31). Only the uncontested EUR 3,000 is awarded under Rule 171.2 RoP (paragraphs 34 and 35).

Key points for practice

Where the court asks for evidence, invoices, hourly rates and work done by each team must be produced. The ceiling is no substitute for proof.
Confidentiality of cost data is handled through a Rule 262A application, not by withholding it from the court.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 69
Rules of Procedure: Rules 150, 151, 152.1, 156.1, 157, 171.2, 262A and 313
Directive 2004/48/EC: Arts 3(1) and 14
Case law cited: Insulet v Menarini, Milan Central Division, 23 December 2024 (UPC_CFI_380/2024), SSAB v Tiroler Rohre, Munich Local Division, 10 February 2025 (UPC_CFI_640/2024)

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: Court fees and costs (UPC).

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

defendantZENTIVA PORTUGAL, LDA8 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
claimantNovartis AG11 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantZENTIVA K.Snormalised name: Zentiva, k.s5 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 For Costs
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): Faute de justificatifs après la demande du juge rapporteur, Novartis n'obtient que les 3 000 euros non contestés au lieu des 38 000 euros demandés.
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 2 501 384 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 2 501 384`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 4 other decision(s): STADAPHARM v ACCORD HEALTHCARE (CoA, 14 April 2025) · Accord Healthcare v Novartis (CFI, 10 April 2025) · ZENTIVA K.S. v NOVARTIS (CFI, 21 March 2025) · STADAPHARM v Novartis (CFI, 3 February 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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