UPC Local Division: Substantive Decision: Dismissal of Infringement Action for Lack of Substantiation, Conditional Counterclaim

The Mannheim Local Division dismissed the infringement action regarding the patent in suit because the plaintiff could not sufficiently demonstrate that the attacked embodiments implement the features of the patent. The dispute centered on the interpretation of the function of the "broker" (feature 1.4), which is supposed to determine one of several cyber analysis systems based on threat metadata. The court interpreted this feature to mean that the broker must have a certain intelligence to read out metadata and, based on this, make a dynamic selection of the appropriate analysis system, rather than merely functioning as a pre-configured switch. Since the defendants had denied that their products (in particular the "AppStack" software) had such functionality in the source code, and the plaintiff could not rebut this submission with concrete facts or offers of evidence, the action was dismissed for lack of sufficient substantiation. The invalidity of the patent asserted by way of counterclaim was not decided upon, as the defendants had made the counterclaim in the oral hearing subject to the procedural condition that the court find an infringement – a condition that the panel deemed permissible (LD Mannheim 5.12.2025, CFI 414/2024).