Holding the Ring Pending Permission: Court of Appeal’s Power to Grant Short “Status-Quo” Injunctions After Finding No Real Prospect of Success

Introduction

AstraZeneca AB & Anor v Generics (UK) Ltd & Ors ([2025] EWCA Civ 924) is the latest chapter in the long-running dispute over dapagliflozin (“Forxiga”), a blockbuster antidiabetic drug. After the High Court revoked AstraZeneca’s Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) and the Court of Appeal dismissed AstraZeneca’s substantive appeal ([2025] EWCA Civ 903), AstraZeneca sought an interim injunction to restrain a coalition of generic companies (Viatris, Teva, Glenmark, Sandoz and Bestway) from launching their products while it asked the Supreme Court for permission to appeal.

The Court of Appeal (Arnold LJ, Peter Jackson LJ and Stuart-Smith LJ) refused any injunction pending the permission application because the proposed appeal had “no real prospect of success”. However, it nonetheless granted a brief, 14-day injunction to preserve the status quo so that the Supreme Court could itself consider whether to grant permission and any further relief. The decision crystallises a nuanced rule: even when an appeal is hopeless, the Court of Appeal retains an equitable discretion to impose a short, holding injunction that simply “keeps the ring” until the Supreme Court takes control.

Summary of the Judgment

No Real Prospect of Success. The Court reaffirmed that a party seeking an injunction pending appeal must show the appeal has “a real prospect of success” (Floyd LJ in Novartis v Hospira). AstraZeneca could not surmount that threshold.
American Cyanamid Not Triggered. Because there was no serious issue to be tried, the Court skipped the usual American Cyanamid balance-of-convenience analysis.
Fourteen-Day Grace Period. Nonetheless, a 14-day injunction was granted to allow an urgent Supreme Court application. The Court was keen not to pre-empt the Supreme Court’s own case-management powers.
Limited Inquiry into Damages. The Court refused to engage in a detailed adequacy-of-damages debate for such a short period, calling it “insufficiently granular” and unnecessary for a purely status-quo order.

Analysis

1. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

American Cyanamid Co v Ethicon Ltd [1975] AC 396 – The seminal authority on interim injunctions. Lord Diplock’s “serious question to be tried” gateway and balance-of-convenience test were acknowledged but not applied because AstraZeneca failed at the gateway.
Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co v Johnson & Johnson [1976] RPC 671 – Buckley LJ’s dictum that courts should “so arrange matters that, when the appeal comes to be heard, the appellate court may be able to do justice” underpinned the decision to issue a short holding order.
Novartis AG v Hospira UK Ltd [2013] EWCA Civ 583 – Floyd LJ’s five-point summary of principles for injunctions pending appeal was treated as the direct template. The Court applied points (1)–(3) to reject the main injunction yet relied on point (5) to justify the 14-day preservation order.

2. The Court’s Legal Reasoning

Arnold LJ’s reasoning followed a strict sequential approach:

Jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal, as a court of equity, still has jurisdiction after dismissing an appeal (s.37 Senior Courts Act 1981).
Prospects on Appeal. The intended Supreme Court appeal was considered hopeless: there was no arguable point of law on either plausibility (“ab initio implausibility” could not save the patent) or arbitrary selection.
Consequences of Hopelessness. Because the appeal lacked merit, no full American Cyanamid exercise was necessary; the injunction had to be refused.
Residual Discretion. Despite that, equity demanded a short period to allow a higher court to intervene if it thought fit. The Court explicitly preserved the status quo “to hold the ring”, echoing Buckley LJ.
Pragmatism on Evidence. The parties’ evidence focused on a multi-month timetable, not a 14-day window. The Court considered a damages assessment for such a fleeting period speculative and disproportionate.

3. Impact of the Decision

The judgment will likely resonate well beyond the pharmaceutical sector:

Injunction Practice. Litigants can no longer assume that losing parties will automatically get a bridge injunction to the Supreme Court; they must show real prospects. But courts may still provide a short “safety-valve” period.
SPC / Life-Science Litigation. The decision reinforces the high bar for patentees relying on plausibility and arbitrary selection arguments when their SPC-supported monopoly is challenged.
Case-Management Guidance. The Court signalled that parties should anticipate post-appeal scenarios early, coordinate dates, and prepare evidence tailored to narrow time-windows.
Separation of Functions. The ruling delineates institutional competence: the Supreme Court, not the Court of Appeal, is best placed to decide whether to entertain a meritless case, but the Court of Appeal can shield that possibility briefly.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC): An intellectual-property right that extends patent-like protections for medicinal products to compensate for time lost during regulatory approval.
Plausibility: A patent-law doctrine requiring that, at the filing date, the skilled person would find the claimed therapeutic effect “plausible”. Competing standards exist (“ab initio implausibility” vs a stricter “plausible promise”).
Arbitrary Selection: A validity attack arguing that the patentee merely carved out one compound from a class without special technical advantage, rendering the claim obvious or lacking inventive step.
Interim Injunction: A temporary court order preventing action (e.g., product launch) until the final determination of litigation or an appeal.
Cross-Undertaking in Damages: The applicant’s promise to compensate the respondent for losses if the injunction later proves unjustified.
Real Prospect of Success: In appeal contexts, roughly a 25% or higher likelihood that the appeal could succeed – more than fanciful, less than likely.
Holding / Bridge Injunction: A very short injunction designed solely to maintain the status quo until another court (here, the Supreme Court) can address the matter.

Conclusion

AstraZeneca v Generics ([2025] EWCA Civ 924) offers a careful calibration of interim-relief principles post-judgment. The Court of Appeal reconfirmed that merit is the gateway: without a “real prospect of success”, even a patent owner protecting a billion-pound franchise cannot secure a substantive injunction pending appeal. Yet, in a pragmatic nod to hierarchical fairness, the Court exercised a narrow discretion to “hold the ring” for 14 days, ensuring the Supreme Court could, if it disagreed, step in.

The ruling thus creates a two-stage model for post-appeal injunctions: (1) merit-based restraint on longer injunctions; (2) a limited, time-boxed injunction purely to preserve institutional comity and procedural order. It will inform litigants and judges alike, shaping strategy in high-stakes patent and commercial cases where the journey doesn’t necessarily end at the Court of Appeal.