Salts v Pelican CA

On 19 February 2026, the English Court of Appeal (Arnold LJ presiding) handed down its decision in Salts v Pelican [2026] EWCA Civ 93 – an appeal against the first instance decision of Ian Karet (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge) in the Patents Court. Salts’ patent GB 2 569 212 covered ostomy bags1which were welded so as to reduce bulging and swelling as the bag filled. At first instance, the patent had been found to be invalid for lack of novelty, and not infringed by Pelican’s range of ostomy bags.

The asserted claim required that there were at least two weld portions which extended “away from a periphery of the appliance” and “downward towards a bottom of the appliance”. The Court upheld the first instance decision that the Pelican product did not infringe on a purposive interpretation. Turning to the doctrine of equivalents, the Court found that although the Pelican product did work in substantially the same way as described in the claims, the skilled person would have understood it to be important that the claim emphasised structural elements and therefore that the patentee had intended strict compliance with the wording. The Court declined to find infringement by equivalence.

Salts also challenged the Patents Court’s finding that the asserted claim was invalid for lack of novelty over a document describing an ostomy bag whose bottom was formed by folding over its lower portion. As this blog has previously noted, Arnold LJ is punctilious on the law of anticipation, particularly the strictness of the test for prior disclosure. In this case, the Court held that the first-instance judge had erred in finding that a schematic diagram had made an explicit disclosure of the location of the bottom of the bag and the relation of certain welds in relation to it. The Court therefore allowed Salts’ appeal on validity.

The Court also ruled on costs, which may be of interest to English lawyers – the case had initially been brought in the IPEC2before being transferred to the Patents Court. Although Pelican argued that the IPEC costs limits should only apply to cases which started and concluded in the IPEC, the Court of Appeal held that Pelican’s recoverable costs from before the transfer should be limited in accordance with the IPEC rules.

In the wake of two years dense with medical device litigation in the UPC, this case might be seen as a pitch by the English Courts to remind us of their selling points. The costs decision enables smaller parties to bring litigation in the English IPEC and defend their rights while protected by costs caps even in the event of transfer, rather than having to incur the significant early costs imposed by the front-loaded UPC procedure. The fact that the Patents Court’s decision on novelty was elucidated in full before being overturned can also give confidence to parties that the English Courts will make findings on relevant grounds that can then be appealed if necessary, even if the product has already found to be non-infringing for another reason – rather than running the risk of having to present substantive novelty arguments orally for the first time before a higher court with no further appeal available.

• 1Ostomy bags are used to collect waste from the stoma created during colostomy, urostomy, or other similar surgeries
• 2The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, a specialist IP court within the English system which regularly handles lower-value patents claims than the Patents Court.