Background
The claimants, Conex IPR Limited and Conex Universal Limited, allege that Sanbra Fyffe Limited infringed EP(UK) 2,872,810 B1 (“EP810”) through its dealings in products pleaded as the “R-Press Fittings”. EP810 concerns press fittings used to connect pipes in, among other applications, plumbing and heating systems. The defendant denies that its products fall within the patent’s claims and alleges invalidity on three grounds: obviousness over two prior-art citations, lack of technical contribution to the art, and insufficiency.
The case management conference had been listed before Mr Justice Mellor on 30 October 2026. The parties agreed directions, including a trial listing of half a day for pre-reading and three and a half days in court, and subsequently agreed to transfer the case into the Shorter Trials Scheme. They asked the judge to determine on the papers the sole remaining dispute: the number of claims the patentee could identify as independently valid. The judgment was handed down remotely on 6 November 2026. Edward Cronan, instructed by EIP Europe LLP, appeared for the claimants; Maxwell Keay, instructed by Gowling WLG (UK) LLP, appeared for the defendant.
EP810 contains 11 claims. Claim 1 concerns a press fitting with a socket, sealing ring and gripping ring, with characterising features concerning weakening features, chamfer angles and relative diameters. Without evidence or expert assistance, the judge said it was reasonable at this stage to assume that the pre-characterising features were accepted as known. He observed that the subsidiary claims’ additional features were difficult not to regard as “merely workshop modifications”, while expressly emphasising that he was not deciding that point.
The Court’s Holding
The claimants’ independently valid claims notice, served on 15 October 2026 with their statement of case on infringement, identified claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 10, “and dependent combinations thereof”. It also relied on every alternative within those claims as independently valid and contemplated amendment to an independently valid alternative if necessary. The defendant calculated that the alternatives and dependencies produced 178 allegedly independently valid claim combinations. The judge said the precise figure did not matter: the notice asserted an unfeasibly large number of separate inventions in a short patent.
The claimants’ infringement statement specified particular options allegedly infringed: option 2 in claim 5, option 2 in claim 8, option 1 in claim 9 and option 3 in claim 10. But no amendment had been suggested or applied for. As the claims stood, the defendant could establish invalidity by proving that any option lacked novelty or was obvious, while fearing that the claimants would delete a vulnerable option and fall back on another combination. Mellor J found that this created significant and unnecessary uncertainty for the defendant’s preparation of its statement of case on validity and was likely to increase costs substantially.
Applying the overriding objective and the Patents Court Guide’s emphasis on active case management and the parties’ continuing duty to assist the court, the judge held that the notice was “directly contrary to the overriding objective”. Those considerations applied with additional force in the Shorter Trials Scheme. Although patentees often reduce their independently valid claims as trial approaches, the claimants had already had an opportunity to consider the pleaded prior art and now had to choose among the combinations they had put in issue.
The defendant proposed a maximum of 10 combinations, citing Sandoz Ltd v Bristol-Meyers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company & Ors [2021] EWHC 1123 (Pat). Mellor J noted that Sandoz differed because it involved five closely related patents and 59 claims, but shared a “scattergun approach” to combinations of features. In the circumstances of this case, considering EP810’s subject matter and claim drafting, he limited the claimants in the CMC order to no more than 10 combinations.
Key Takeaways
- The claimants may rely on no more than 10 combinations as independently valid; the court did not decide infringement or validity.
- The ruling addresses the breadth of this IVC Notice, not a universal numerical cap for every patent case.
- Active case management and the overriding objective apply with additional force under the Shorter Trials Scheme.
- The agreed timetable includes the defendant’s PPD by 20 November 2026, any consequential amended infringement statement by 11 December 2026 at the latest, and its validity statement 25 weeks from the first day of the trial window.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how the Patents Court may require an early, realistic selection of independently valid claims where alternatives and dependencies would otherwise multiply the validity issues. It is a fact-specific case-management ruling, particularly relevant to Shorter Trials Scheme litigation, rather than a determination of the merits or a fixed rule applicable to all patents.