Umicore NV/SA v Elemental Benelux (CFI, 14 April 2026)

Date	14 April 2026
Court	CFI
Division	The Hague (NL) Local Division
Type of action	Infringement Action
Case number(s)	UPC_CFI_1612/2025
Registry reference	UPC-CFI-0001612/2025
Parties	Umicore NV/SA v. Elemental Benelux B.V. et al

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.

Contact the firm

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By an order of 14 April 2026 (UPC_CFI_1612/2025), the judge-rapporteur of The Hague Local Division classifies as confidential technical information on a defendant’s process, contained in the statement of defence and exhibit ES5, in Umicore’s infringement action on EP 4 087 952 against Elemental Benelux and seven other companies. He refuses, however, to restrict Umicore’s access to a single natural person, since the information had already been shared with it under a wider non-disclosure agreement.

Question

How should trade secrets relied on by the defendant be protected, and may the claimant’s access be confined to a narrow circle where the information has already been disclosed to it under a non-disclosure agreement?

Decision

The judge accepts that the material consists of technical details of the sixth defendant’s process, a trade secret of high value, and classifies it as confidential information under Art. 58 UPCA, excluded from publication. He dismisses the request to refuse public access in advance, which would prejudge any future application under Rule 262.3 (paragraph 3.1.1). As the information had already been disclosed to Umicore under a wider non-disclosure agreement, there is no reason to restrict access in the proceedings, which Elemental did not contest: the designated persons and any technical experts have access, subject to confidentiality and penalty payments (paragraphs 3.1.2 and 3.3.2 to 3.3.5). The Rule 29(a) time limits run from receipt of the unredacted pleadings (paragraphs 3.2.1 and 3.3.8).

Key points for practice

A prior non-disclosure agreement between the parties may justify a wider circle of access than the one proposed by the party invoking secrecy.
The Hague Division declines to exclude public access in advance, leaving that to any future application under Rule 262.3.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 58
Rules of Procedure: Rules 29(a), 262 and 262A

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: 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

UPC_CFI_1612/2025 official number

Follow this case

Parties

claimantUmicore NVFollow this party
claimantSA5 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantElemental Benelux B.V. et alFollow 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): Le juge classe confidentielles les informations sur le procédé de la défenderesse, refuse de limiter l'accès d'Umicore compte tenu d'un accord de confidentialité antérieur plus large et fait courir les délais de réplique à compter de la réception des écritures non expurgées.
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 4 087 952 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 4 087 952`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified)	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.

Receive an alert

Weekly summary of new records and substantive updates matching what you follow. Address confirmed by email, unsubscribe at any time, one email per week even where several of your follows match.