MILAN CENTRAL DIVISION Law and Practice Contributed by: Luca Pellicciari, Lorenzo Battarino and Daniel Borgogni, Trevisan & Cuonzo
injunction proceedings is therefore available only in exceptional cases. • The intervener must have a legal interest in joining the proceedings, that is to say that the outcome of the same would directly affect its rights. In that case the court concluded that Menarini had not been shown to have a proper legal interest, but rather only a fac - tual interest in the outcome of the case (in so far as it was the distributor of the alleg - edly infringing product in suit and could be negatively affected at a commercial level by a preliminary injunction). In a second case pending between Accord and Novartis (now settled), Zentiva filed an applica - tion to intervene in the proceedings in support of Accord’s claims. Once again, the Milan CD dismissed such application (ORD_10348/2025). Albeit recognising the similarities between the positions of the original claimant and of the inter - vener, the court noted that allowing an interven - tion requires the applicant to prove not only a mere factual interest, but rather a legally qualified interest, determined by the need to prevent the direct impact, in its own domain, of any harmful consequences deriving from the judgment. On the second topic concerning third-party access to documents on case files, the Milan CD also adopted a strict approach. See 4.3 Third- Party Access to Documents for more details. 4.3 Third-Party Access to Documents So far the Milan CD has adopted a rather strict approach in scrutinising requests to access doc - uments of the case by third parties not directly involved in the proceedings. In the same Accord v Novartis case mentioned in 4.2 Key Procedural Issues , Stadapharm requested access under Rule 262.1 (b) RoP to
documents and pleadings of the case, citing an interest in reviewing the content thereof to ver - ify the consistency of Novartis’ arguments with those put forward in other pending proceedings before a German national court against Novartis, concerning the same patent in suit. The Milan CD reasoned that access to docu - ments on file must be assessed on the basis of a proper balancing of the interest of the applicant – on the one hand – and the interest in the integ - rity of justice on the other hand, being “integrity” understood as an area of freedom for the parties to deploy their defences free from influence and any form of conditioning by third parties active on the same market. In the specific case at hand, the court concluded that Stadapharm’s specific interest relating to its defence before another court was outweighed by the general interest to safeguard the integrity of the UPC proceedings in which the access request was made, hence dismissing the application (ORD_68703/2024). 4.4 Pending Procedural Issues No publicly known procedural issues worth not - ing are pending at the time of writing. 4.5 Influence of Prior Local Practice on Procedural Issues Decisions in the limited number of cases dealt with so far do not indicate any significant influ - ence of prior local practice on procedural issues handled by the Milan CD, except for the above-mentioned strict approach to third-party access to documents on case files, as already highlighted in 4.3 Third-Party Access to Docu- ments , which is likely to have been influenced by traditional Italian practice.
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