Invalidity of juicer patent upheld on appeal

In its decision of 28 August 2026, the UPC Court of Appeal (CoA) upheld the finding of invalidity by the Paris Local Division of the Court of First Instance (CFI) regarding Hurom’s patent EP3155936.

Admissibility of application to amend the patent

At first instance¹, Hurom (the claimant in the first instance action) filed an unconditional request to amend the patent – its main request – and a conditional auxiliary request based on a further amendment to the patent. NUC and WARMCOOK (the defendants) objected to the admissibility of Hurom’s application to amend the patent under R. 30.1(b) RoP, arguing that it did not address the requirements of Art. 84, Art. 123(2), and 123(3) EPC.

R. 30.1(b) RoP requires that an application to amend a patent in response to a counterclaim for revocation include an explanation as to why the amendments satisfy the requirements of Article 84, 123(2), and 123(3) EPC.

The Paris LD declared Hurom's requests for amendment admissible.

On appeal, Hurom relied on the first instance auxiliary request as its main request, and filed two new auxiliary requests. NUC and WARMCOOK argued in their cross-appeal that the Paris LD had erred in admitting the auxiliary request at first instance, which had become Hurom's main request on appeal.

This was rejected, however, by the CoA, which held that Hurom's submissions before the CFI had addressed these requirements. The court held that its review of admissibility under R. 30.1 RoP is limited to checking whether the applicant for amendment has actually filed an explanation of why the amendments satisfy the requirements of Art. 84 and 123(2), (3) EPC, and not whether that explanation is convincing; that question is for the assessment of validity on the merits. NUC and WARMCOOK’s arguments were held to relate to the merits of the case and so were not relevant to the admissibility of the amendments. The appellant’s main request was therefore held admissible.

By contrast, the CoA considered that the issues addressed by the two auxiliary requests filed in the appeal proceedings had already been sufficiently discussed during the CFI proceedings, and that Hurom did not convincingly demonstrate that it could not reasonably have filed an amendment corresponding to the two auxiliary requests during the CFI proceedings. As such, the two new auxiliary requests were held inadmissible on the basis of R. 222.2 RoP, under which requests, facts and evidence which have not been submitted by a party during proceedings at the CFI may be disregarded by the CoA.

Validity and claim construction

The CoA's assessment of validity was accordingly limited to the main request filed in the appeal proceedings, i.e. the auxiliary request at first instance, which the Paris LD had found lacked an inventive step. The CoA arrived at the same conclusion as Paris LD, finding the amended claims invalid for lack of inventive step.

In reaching this conclusion, the CoA held that, as a general rule, where claims are amended, the entire unamended description may be used as an aid to interpreting the claims. Hurom had argued that the amended claims were limited to the embodiment of Figure 7, in which the power connector is a separate component from the first shaft gear. The CoA rejected this on the basis of the general statements in the description. The amended claims were therefore not limited to separate components (the limitation the auxiliary requests had sought to introduce), and the prior art document D1 disclosed the relevant features.

Jurisdiction of the UPC to decide infringement in Poland

At first instance, Hurom had alleged infringement of the patent in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. Poland is not a UPCA Contracting Member State, therefore the CoA went on to consider the UPC’s jurisdiction to decide infringement in Poland.

The court further applied the principles of long-arm jurisdiction set out by the CJEU in BSH Hausgeräte v Electrolux (C-339/22), whereby a court of the EU Member State in which the defendant is domiciled has jurisdiction to hear an action relating to infringement of a patent granted in another EU Member State even where the defendant challenges, as part of its defence, the validity of that patent. The courts of the EU Member State that in which the patent was granted or validated, however, have exclusive jurisdiction to rule on validity of the patent.

Furthermore, the UPC can hear claims against a defendant domiciled outside the EU together with closely connected claims against a co-defendant domiciled in a UPCA Contracting Member State².

In this case, NUC Electronics Europe and WARMCOOK are domiciled in UPCA Contracting Member States (Germany and France). NUC Electronics Co., Ltd is domiciled in Korea.

The UPC had jurisdiction over the infringement claim in Poland, despite Poland not being a UPCA Contracting Member State, through the domicile of NUC Electronics Europe and WARMCOOK. NUC Europe and WARMCOOK acted as anchor defendants³, bringing the Korean co-defendant, NUC Korea, under the UPC’s jurisdiction too. However, since the UPC does not have jurisdiction to rule on validity of the Polish part of the European patent, the finding of invalidity was limited to the national parts of the European patent in the UPCA Contracting Member States (France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands). The Polish part of the patent remained in force as granted, and infringement in Poland therefore fell to be assessed on the basis of the granted claims.

Infringement in Poland

At first instance, the Paris LD held that it had jurisdiction over the alleged acts in Poland, but dismissed the Polish infringement claim because Hurom had not produced sufficient supporting evidence of infringement. Hurom had relied on accessibility throughout Europe of websites offering the allegedly infringing products for sale, and turnover said to have been generated by NUC Korea in Europe.

On appeal, Hurom argued that NUC Europe is mentioned on NUC Korea’s website as the “Europe Branch” of NUC Korea and that NUC Europe offers and sells the attacked devices on its own website as well as on Amazon “at least in Germany”. This was not found to be convincing evidence of NUC Europe infringing the patent in Poland.

Regarding alleged infringement by WARMCOOK, Hurom alleged that WARMCOOK advertised its products on Amazon’s French webpage with an offer to deliver in various European countries including Poland, together with an option to purchase the product. The respondents argued that the reference to delivery in Poland on the French webpage corresponded to an automatic setting on the Amazon website. Whether this constituted an infringement of the Polish part of the patent was determined to be a question of Polish law.

The CoA held that it was for Hurom both to prove the facts on which it relied and to establish that the disputed acts amounted to infringement under the applicable Polish law. However, the expert opinion of the Polish attorney submitted by Hurom only covered the date of enforceability of the patent and the statute of limitation under Polish law, but not any opinion as to which acts qualify as acts of infringement. The CoA therefore held that there was no reason to conclude that the CFI erred in not finding infringement in Poland.

Admissibility of challenge to jurisdiction in statement of defence

A further issue was the admissibility of the challenge to the UPC’s jurisdiction regarding acts of infringement in Poland.

Hurom challenged the CFI decision to the extent that it held the respondents’ objections to the UPC’s jurisdiction based on Art. 34 UPCA admissible. Hurom argued that the objection is a challenge to the court’s jurisdiction covered by R. 19 RoP and that the failure by the defendants to raise it as a preliminary objection within one month of service of the statement of claim should have been treated as a submission to the jurisdiction of the UPC pursuant to R. 19.7 RoP.

The CoA held that the objection was admissible even if it was a challenge to the court's jurisdiction. A defendant accepts or contests the international jurisdiction of the court through its first statement in the proceedings, which may be a preliminary objection or, where none is filed, the statement of defence. The respondents had raised the objection in their statement of defence, so their challenge was admissible.