QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux (CFI, 23 July 2025)

Date	23 July 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Düsseldorf (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_33456/2025 · ORD_33561/2025
Parties	QIAGEN Sciences, LLC

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 23 July 2025 (UPC_CFI_181/2025), Judge Schumacher, judge-rapporteur of the Düsseldorf Local Division, extended to 15 September 2025 the time limits for the reply and the defence to the counterclaim for revocation of QIAGEN Sciences, which is suing bioMérieux and its German subsidiary for infringement of EP 2 726 883. Access to the unredacted statement of defence had been opened to the claimant’s whole team only by the confidentiality order of 15 July 2025, which justifies the extension.

Question

Does the Rule 29(a) time limit run despite a pending confidentiality request, and does delayed access to unredacted documents justify an extension?

Decision

The two-month period runs from service, even where a Rule 262A request is pending (paragraph 7, following FUJIFILM v Kodak and Dolby v ASUS, against the view of the Hamburg Local Division in Avago v Tesla). However, as access to the unredacted versions was delayed, the extension must be granted: the claimant has two months from the date on which its patent attorneys, relevant personnel and external expert obtained access, the redacted passages being integral to the non-infringement arguments (paragraph 8). The same applies to the defence to the counterclaim, so that infringement, validity and amendment arguments can be reconciled (paragraph 9). The extension does not unduly delay the proceedings (paragraph 10).

Key points for practice

Practical point: a confidentiality request does not suspend the time limit for the reply, a party whose access is restricted should apply for an extension under Rule 9.3 RoP, calculated from the date its whole team actually obtains access.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rules 9.3(a), 29(a), 30 and 262A
Case law cited: FUJIFILM v Kodak, Düsseldorf Local Division, 4 April 2024 (UPC_CFI_355/2023), Dolby v ASUS, Düsseldorf Local Division, 24 June 2024 (UPC_CFI_456/2023), Avago v Tesla, Hamburg Local Division, 28 November 2023 (UPC_CFI_54/2023), Polidoro v Bekaert, Mannheim Local Division, 8 May 2025 (UPC_CFI_716/2024)

Related decisions

QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux, 15 July 2025, confidentiality order opening access to the unredacted documents.
QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux, 5 August 2026, later decision in the infringement action.

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), 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.

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

claimantQIAGEN Sciences, LLC3 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): Le délai de la règle 29(a) court dès la signification malgré une demande de confidentialité pendante, mais l'accès différé aux pièces non expurgées justifie de le proroger au 15 septembre 2025.
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 2 726 883 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux (CFI, 5 August 2026) cited in this record
QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux (CFI, 15 July 2025) cited in this record
Polidoro v Bekaert Combustion Technology (CFI, 8 May 2025) cited in this record
Dolby International v ASUS Computer (CFI, 24 June 2024) cited in this record
FUJIFILM v Kodak (CFI, 4 April 2024) cited in this record
Avago Technologies International Sales v Tesla Germany (CFI, 28 November 2023) 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 2 726 883`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux (CFI, 5 August 2026) · QIAGEN Sciences v bioMérieux (CFI, 15 July 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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