Patent case: TCL EUROPE SAS v. Corning Incorporated, UPC

A realistic starting point is typically a prior art disclosure as a whole. Absent a specific reason or pointer in the disclosure itself (or based on common general knowledge) to do so, the selection of a particular example composition as a “starting point”, merely because it happens to come “closest” to the claimed subject matter in terms of structural components, bears the risk that such selection itself already involves hindsight. Where the features of a patent claim, in an interdependent way, even if they are not synergetic in the sense of having a special combination effect, provide a solution to the objective problem, ignoring these interdependencies and dividing the objective problem up into separate problems amounts to hindsight reasoning which is to be avoided in the assessment of inventive step.

Case date: 24 February 2026
Case number: CFI 337/2025
Court: UPC Central Division of the Court of First Instance Munich

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law