Skip to content
patentino

Topic dossier

Claim construction in UPC case law

How the UPC's first-instance divisions and the Court of Appeal construe patent claims (Art. 69 EPC and the Protocol on its interpretation): the Court of Appeal's principles (NanoString v 10x Genomics), description and drawings, the skilled person's view, functional features, the same construction for infringement and validity, the prosecution history, numerical ranges and measurement methods.

decisions in the dossier
143
of them Court of Appeal
23
steps of the test
7
As of
6 Oct 2026

The steps of the test

The dossier orders the decisions by the steps of the legal test. For each step: the question it is about and the number of decisions addressing it.

  1. 1. Principles (Art. 69 EPC, Protocol)

    Which principles does the UPC apply to claim construction?

    132 decisions

  2. 2. Description and drawings

    What role do the description and drawings play, and what if they contradict the claim?

    138 decisions

  3. 3. Skilled person and technical meaning

    From whose perspective is the claim construed, and how are terms and the purpose of features determined?

    137 decisions

  4. 4. Functional and purpose features

    How are functional features and purpose / suitability features ('suitable for', 'configured to') construed?

    65 decisions

  5. 5. Same construction for infringement and validity

    Is the claim construed in the same way for infringement and validity, and may the attacked embodiment or the prior art influence the construction?

    90 decisions

  6. 6. Prosecution history and other decisions

    What weight do the prosecution history and the construction by the EPO or national courts carry?

    49 decisions

  7. 7. Numerical ranges, parameters and measurement methods

    How are numerical values, ranges and parameters construed, and which measurement method applies?

    18 decisions

Selected passages

One decision per step – Court of Appeal first, then the most cited, then the newest – with a verbatim quote from the decision. The selection is not a legal assessment.

Step: Principles (Art. 69 EPC, Protocol)

“Der Patentanspruch ist nicht nur der Ausgangspunkt, sondern die maßgebliche Grundlage für die BesƟmmung des Schutzbereichs eines europäischen Patents nach Art. 69 EPÜ in Verbindung mit dem Protokoll über die Auslegung von Art. 69 EPÜ.“
Court of Appeal, 26 Feb 2024, UPC_CoA_335/2023, para. 2 · On the UPC website (overview)

Step: Description and drawings

“Für die Auslegung eines Patentanspruchs kommt es nicht allein auf seinen genauen Wortlaut im sprachlichen Sinne an, vielmehr sind die Beschreibung und die Zeichnungen als Erläuterungshilfen für die Auslegung stets mit heranzuziehen und nicht nur zur Behebung etwaiger Unklarheiten im Patentanspruch anzuwenden.“
Court of Appeal, 25 Sept 2024, UPC_CoA_182/2024, para. 81 · Decision on the UPC website

Step: Skilled person and technical meaning

“From feature 1.4, in connection with feature 1.6, the skilled person understands that the on-body device of claim 1 must be configured such that the sensor assembly is received in the enclosure from beneath. Such a configuration allows that both assemblies are coupled within the applicator before either of them is …“
Court of Appeal, 14 Feb 2025, UPC_CoA_382/2024, para. 49 · Decision on the UPC website

Step: Functional and purpose features

“Any lowering or binding may bring about an effect, but that is not necessarily enough to bring about a therapeutic effect. This requires that the claimed treatment causes a noticeable improvement of the medical condition of the patient suffering from the disease mentioned in the claim.“
Court of Appeal, 25 Nov 2025, UPC_CoA_528/2024, para. 47 · Decision on the UPC website

Step: Same construction for infringement and validity

“These principles for the interpretation of a patent claim apply equally to the assessment of the infringement and the validity of a European patent.“
Court of Appeal, 25 Nov 2025, UPC_CoA_464/2024, para. 49 · Decision on the UPC website

What patentino offers on this topic

  • The full dossier in the app: all 143 decisions per step, with a short summary marked as AI, verbatim-checked quotes with paragraph numbers and the appeal status.
  • Research for your own case: describe the facts in your own words or upload a brief – patentino finds the matching decisions and checks every passage against the decision text.
  • In your AI tool: via the MCP server, the topic_dossier tool retrieves this dossier directly in Claude, Langdock or Copilot Studio.
Request access See an example

More topics

Quotes are verbatim from the decisions; the version published by the court is authoritative. Not legal advice. Coverage and numbers