LD Milan, January 15, 2025, Procedural Order, UPC_CFI_472/2024

1. Key takeaways

The court may set deadlines to await an upcoming appeals decision of the EPO

The coordination between the appeal proceedings before the EPO and the proceedings before UPC may be achieved in the most efficient way taking into account the position of all parties, for instance by extending the time limits for filing the statement of defence and the counterclaim for revocation, allowing for a more overall procedural efficiency, on one hand not staying the proceedings and on the other hand waiting for the upcoming EPO's decision.

On a reasoned request, the parties may be granted a deadline within which to submit their observations on the EPO's decision, in accordance with Rule 36 RoP. The adopted solution does not violate the adversarial principle and complies with the equality of the parties. Therefore, the principle of efficiency is guaranteed, at the same time preserving the right to a full adversarial principle, which takes the form of