UPC Aligns Implicit Disclosure Test With EPO In SharkNinja V SEB

In SharkNinja v SEB (UPC_CFI_1594/2025), the Paris Local Division refused provisional measures in an order dated 10 April 2026, finding the patent more likely invalid than valid. The case concerned EP 3 689 198, a patent covering a multi-functional cooking system capable of operating in both air-frying and pressure-cooking modes, asserted against SEB’s “Cookeo Infinity” range.

Citing FujiFilm v Kodak, the Court said lack of novelty may arise not only from what is expressly disclosed, but also where a skilled person would regard a feature as “necessarily implied” in the prior art, or would arrive at it “inevitably and without any reasonable doubt” by applying that prior-art teaching.

That wording is notable because FujiFilm v Kodak itself did not use “reasonable doubt” in its novelty formulation. In FujiFilm v Kodak, the Court said that a feature is implicitly disclosed where it is the “clear, immediate and unambiguous consequence” of what is explicitly disclosed, or where “the skilled person would inevitably arrive at a result falling within the terms of a claim.” In SharkNinja v SEB, The Paris Local Division reproduced that inevitability-based approach but added the qualifier “without any reasonable doubt”, making the threshold more explicit than in the source decision.

That will sound familiar to European patent readers. The EPO Guidelines say that an implicit novelty objection should be raised only where there can be “no reasonable doubt” as to the practical effect of the prior teaching. The Boards of Appeal have likewise long treated novelty as a matter of “inevitability” rather than “probability,” including in T 583/01 following T 270/97. The Case Law of the Boards of Appeal also summarises the same line by asking whether the skilled person could conceive of any realistic alternative to the alleged implicit feature.

The interest in the order is therefore less that it announces a new novelty test, and more that the Paris Local Division restated the UPC approach in terms that align closely with familiar EPC language. The addition of “without any reasonable doubt” is likely to stand out in particular to European practitioners used to EPO novelty case law and practice.

In practical terms, the point remains that a prior-art document need not spell out every feature explicitly. An unstated feature may still be treated as disclosed where, read objectively through the eyes of the skilled person, the prior art leaves no real alternative but that the feature is present. A merely possible or probable reading is not sufficient. The feature must follow inevitably.