Pirelli Tyre v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, 19 March 2026)

Date	19 March 2026
Court	CFI
Division	Milan (IT) Local Division
Type of action	Infringement Action
Registry reference	UPC_CFI_770-2024
Parties	Pirelli Tyre s.p.a. v. Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber Co., ltd.

Official decision (PDF) · UPC registry entry

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Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By an order of 19 March 2026 (UPC_CFI_770/2024 and UPC_CFI_556/2025), the judge-rapporteur of the Milan Local Division, after consulting the panel, revisited the adversarial examination of the seized tyre samples planned for the oral hearing: the tyres will be examined without being cut or sectioned, any further determination being reserved until after the hearing. The order shows how case management adapts the taking of evidence to technical constraints and to the parties’ shared position.

Question

Should the seized samples be cut at the hearing, or be the subject of a technical investigation, to inspect the internal carcass structure?

Decision

Pirelli Tyre had argued that cutting required a laboratory and specialists, and proposed a protocol. Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber objected for lack of safeguards of impartiality. Both parties later considered the internal inspection unnecessary, while filing a joint protocol. The judge-rapporteur found that the technical constraints ruled out cutting at the hearing of 14 April 2026, that the joint protocol, which set no precise timetable, was hard to reconcile with that date and with the time needed for any expert report (Rules 185.4(f) and 201.5(d) RoP), and held, on grounds of efficiency and proportionality, that it was better to decide after the hearing.

Key points for practice

An evidentiary step ordered at the interim conference may be revisited when it proves unworkable at the hearing.
Practical point: a jointly proposed protocol for a technical examination should include a timetable compatible with the hearing date and any expert report.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 41(3), 42 and 52(1)
Rules of Procedure: Preamble (paragraph 2) and Rules 185.4(f) and 201.5(d)

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

Pirelli Tyre v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, 2026-02-13), 13 February 2026
PIRELLI TYRE v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, UPC_CFI_770-2024UPC_CFI_770-2024, 2026-05-26), 26 May 2026
PIRELLI TYRE v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, 2026-07-16), 16 July 2026

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.

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.

Parties

claimantPirelli Tyre s.p.anormalised name: PIRELLI TYRE S.P.A7 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantSichuan Yuanxing Rubber Co., ltdnormalised name: Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber Co., Ltd.6 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): Les échantillons saisis seront examinés contradictoirement à l'audience sans découpe ni sectionnement, toute décision sur une mesure d'instruction technique étant réservée après l'audience.
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.

Related decisions cited in the analyses

PIRELLI TYRE v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, 16 July 2026) cited in this record
PIRELLI TYRE v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, UPC_CFI_770/2024, 26 May 2026) cited in this record
Pirelli Tyre v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber (CFI, 13 February 2026) 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.

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