UPC Accepts Patent Literature Can Establish Common General Knowledge

The UPC Milan Local Division has held that, in exceptional circumstances, patent literature may be used to establish the common general knowledge of the skilled person. The point arose in Pirelli Tyre S.p.A. v Sichuan Yuanxing Rubber Co., Ltd. (UPC_CFI_770/2024, UPC_CFI_556/2025), a decision concerning motorcycle tyre patent EP 3 519 207 B1 (EP’207). The court rejected the defendant’s counterclaim for revocation and found infringement.

Background

Pirelli alleged that SYR’s Helios HA-51R and HA-51F motorcycle tyres infringed EP’207, which concerns a motorcycle tyre designed to balance on-road and off-road performance. SYR denied infringement and counterclaimed for revocation, including on the grounds of insufficiency and lack of inventive step.

A key issue was how the skilled person would understand the patent’s references to the tyre’s “tread pattern”, including the representation of a three-dimensional tread surface on a flat plane. SYR argued that the patent’s instructions for carrying out that representation were unclear, and that different methods could lead to different measurements.

Patent literature and common general knowledge

The Milan Local Division aligned itself with the EPO Boards of Appeal approach in T 1000/12 and T 412/09, under which patent literature represents the skilled person’s common general knowledge only in exceptional circumstances. One example is where a series of patent documents gives a consistent picture that a particular technical procedure was generally known.

The court found that this exceptional situation existed on the facts. There was evidence of a series of patent documents in the tyre field using the same technique for representing the tread pattern in a plane, and the court accepted that the technique formed part of the skilled person’s common general knowledge.

This was important for both claim interpretation and sufficiency. Considering the patent as a whole, including the description and figures, the court held that the tread pattern should be measured on a flattened, two-dimensional representation of the tread, rather than on the physical, curved tyre itself. It also found that SYR had not shown that an alternative method of representation would lead to materially different or non-comparable measurements.

Why this point matters

The court expressly adopted the EPO’s position on use of patent literature to establish the common general knowledge. This position is a restrictive one, and patent literature will only be referred to in exceptional circumstances. However, where multiple patent documents in a narrow technical field consistently use the same representation, terminology or procedure, the UPC may be willing to treat that pattern as evidence of what the skilled person would commonly know.

For patentees, this may assist where a defendant argues that a claim feature is not defined or potentially technically uncertain, and the patentee can point to evidence in patent literature that the relevant technique or terminology was consistently used in the field. For defendants, it is a reminder that relying on theoretical alternatives may require evidence that those alternatives were realistic in the field and would have materially affected the relevant technical assessment.

Concluding thoughts

This decision is likely to be cited in future UPC cases concerning the evidential status of patent literature. It aligns the UPC with EPO case law while illustrating the circumstances in which patent documents may contribute to the common general knowledge analysis.

The point will be particularly relevant in technically specialised sectors where industry practice is documented more often in patents than in textbooks or handbooks. It remains to be seen how later UPC panels will apply the requirement for a “series” of documents giving a consistent picture.