TIRU v. VALINEA ENERGIE and MAGUIN SAS

This case concerns patent infringement proceedings before the Local Division of Paris of the Unified Patent Court (Case No. UPC_CFI_130/2025). The claimant, TIRU, is a French company specializing in energy recovery from waste, founded in 1922 and a subsidiary of the PAPREC Group since 2021. TIRU is the holder of European Patent EP 3 178 578 B1 (EP'578), granted on August 1, 2018. The defendants are VALINEA ENERGIE, a French company belonging to the VEOLIA Group that operates the alleged infringing furnace at the Unité de Valorisation Energétique du Pays de Montbéliard, and MAGUIN SAS, the manufacturer of the combustion cell of the accused furnace.

The procedural history began on December 17, 2024, when TIRU filed two parallel requests for evidence preservation and site visits against VALINEA and MAGUIN. Two ex parte orders were issued on December 23, 2024, authorizing the measures but limiting their scope to the characterization of infringement. The seizure measures were executed on January 14, 2025, and expert reports were filed on January 20-21, 2025. These evidence measures were confirmed on appeal (UPC_CoA_327/2025, July 15, 2025). On February 18, 2025, TIRU filed the main infringement actions. A revocation action was filed by VEOLIA PROPRETE before the Central Division on May 13, 2025, and the defendants filed counterclaims for revocation on June 4, 2025. On July 22, 2025, the panel ordered bifurcation of the revocation counterclaims to the Central Division and joined the two infringement files under the same case number.

On March 18, 2026, the Central Division rendered its decision on validity, rejecting the requests for annulment of EP'578 and maintaining the patent in modified form pursuant to auxiliary request 2.0. Following a case management conference on March 26, 2026, the value of the dispute was set at EUR 2 million, and a final round of submissions was ordered. TIRU sought findings of infringement of claims 1-11 and 13 of EP'578 as maintained, injunctive relief, and damages, claiming that the furnace at Montbéliard reproduced the maintained claims.

The Court addressed several preliminary issues. First, it held that challenges to the regularity of the execution of seizure measures and the probative value of the expert's seizure report were matters for the panel deciding on the merits, not for the judge reviewing the seizure order. Second, the Court established a coherent approach between validity and infringement, holding that when a patent holder argues in defense of validity that a claimed feature cannot be presumed to be present in the prior art without clear and unambiguous disclosure, that same patent holder must demonstrate with equal clarity and unambiguity that the claimed feature is present in the allegedly infringing product or process. Third, the Court held that it had exclusive jurisdiction under Art. 32.1(a) UPCA over the abuse of right defense raised by VALINEA, as it was intrinsically linked to the infringement action.

On the merits, the Court rejected all of TIRU's infringement claims, both literal and by equivalence, against both VALINEA ENERGIE and MAGUIN. The Court also rejected VALINEA's counterclaim for abusive procedure. The Court found it unnecessary to rule on the defendants' very subsidiary guarantee claims since TIRU's claims were entirely dismissed. TIRU was ordered to bear all costs of the proceedings and to pay EUR 100,000 each to VALINEA ENERGIE and MAGUIN for reimbursement of legal costs, with the Court applying a joint ceiling of EUR 200,000 for the entire case regardless of the number of co-defendants, citing the Nordic-Baltic Regional Division decision in UPC_CFI_527/2024.