Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. & OROPE Germany GmbH v. Panasonic Holdings Corporation

This order of the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court, issued on 19 December 2023, concerned a procedural request by the Appellants (Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd. and OROPE Germany GmbH) for shortening of a time period pursuant to R.225(e) and R.9.3(b) of the Rules of Procedure (expedition of the appeal). The Respondent was Panasonic Holdings Corporation, and the patent at issue was EP 2 568 724 (though the Appellants mistakenly cited EP 3 096 315 in their filings).

The underlying dispute arose from an order of 27 November 2023 by the President of the Court of First Instance, which rejected the Appellants' application to change the language of the proceedings from German to English. The Appellants appealed this order and, in the main appeal proceedings (APL_594246/2023), requested that the Court of Appeal overturn the order and direct that the language of proceedings be changed to English, the language of the patent in suit.

In parallel, the Appellants filed a procedural request seeking (i) a deadline of five working days for the Respondent to lodge its Statement of response, and (ii) a decision by the Court of Appeal as soon as possible thereafter, preferably at least three days before 22 December 2023. The Appellants argued they had an urgent interest in being able to file their first Statement of defence and Counterclaim in the proceedings before the Court of First Instance, due on 22 December 2023, in English rather than German.

The Court of Appeal, sitting as a panel of three legally qualified judges (Rian Kalden as Presiding Judge, Ingeborg Simonsson as judge-rapporteur, and Patricia Rombach), first addressed the composition of the panel. It held that under Art. 9.1 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA), a panel normally sits in a multinational composition of five judges, but that procedural requests not involving technical issues can be adjudicated by three legally qualified judges, consistent with the logic underlying the composition of panels of the Court of First Instance and by analogy with Art. 9.2 UPCA, as well as the principles of proportionality, flexibility, fairness, and equity set out in the Preamble of the Rules of Procedure.

On the merits of the request, the Court found the request admissible and noted there was no need to consult the Respondent. Under R.224.2(b), the Respondent had 15 days from service of the Statement of grounds of appeal to lodge a Statement of response. The Court observed that the Appellants had filed their request for expedition on 12 December 2023, outside office hours, having used the full 15 days available under R.224.1(b) and R.224.2(b). Even if the request had been granted the very next day, the Respondent would have had only four working days to respond, and the Court would have been required to decide the case on the same day without the opportunity to hear the parties.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the Appellants had insufficiently taken into account the Respondent's interest in being given sufficient time to properly prepare its Statement of response, in proportion to the time the Appellants themselves had taken to prepare their Statement of grounds of appeal. Granting the request would have been contrary to the principles of proportionality, fairness, and equity. While the Court acknowledged that this outcome meant the Statement of defence would shortly have to be lodged in German (the contested language of proceedings) before the Court of First Instance, it held that under the circumstances, the interests of the Respondent and the principles of due process outweighed the interests of the Appellants.

Accordingly, the Court of Appeal rejected the request for shortening of the time period and closed the application (App_594339/2023).