2026-05-06 - LD Hamburg - HORL 1993 v. Magna - UPC_CFI_388/2025

GERMAN: 1. Um Ansprüche, die sich auf Länder außerhalb des EPGÜ beziehen, zu begründen, müssen hinreichend konkrete Tatsachen vorgetragen werden, die das Gericht in die Lage versetzen, zuverlässig über eine Patentverletzung in Nicht-EPG-Ländern zu entscheiden. 2. Ein Anspruch auf Urteilsveröffentlichung ist gegeben, wenn die Klägerin ein berechtigtes Interesse an einer solchen hat. Dies kann der Fall sein, wenn das Produkt der Klägerin und die angegriffene Ausführungsform auf der Webseite des Patentverletzers in der Gegenüberstellung negativ beschrieben wird und die angegriffene Ausführungsform in einer Fachzeitschrift in ihren Eigenschaften positiv hervorgehoben wird. ENGLISH: 1. In order to substantiate claims relating to countries outside the UPCA, sufficiently detailed facts must be presented to enable the court to make a reliable assessment of patent infringement in non-UPCA countries. 2. A right to publication of the judgment exists if the claimant has a legitimate interest in such publication. This may be the case if the claimant’s product and the contested embodiment are described negatively in a comparison on the patent infringer’s website, whilst the contested embodiment is highlighted positively in terms of its characteristics in a specialist journal.

The Hamburg Local Division found direct infringement of a unitary patent and granted the full merits remedy set for the Contracting Member States, while dismissing every claim directed at non-UPCA countries. By its first headnote the division held that claims relating to countries outside the UPCA must be supported by sufficiently concrete facts enabling the court to decide infringement reliably under the law of each of those countries: applicable law follows lex loci protectionis and does not follow from the Court's jurisdiction, so listing the foreign statutes and asserting that they broadly correspond to the UPCA is not enough. By its second headnote it held that a right to publication under Art. 80 UPCA requires a demonstrated legitimate interest, which may arise where the infringer presents the patentee's product negatively in a comparison on its own website while highlighting the accused product favourably in a trade journal; the over-broad publication request was narrowed to a single half-page summary in that journal. On the information limb the division granted the full Art. 67 UPCA account together with document production under Art. 68(3)(a), (b) UPCA and R. 191 sentence 1 alternative 2 RoP, refused a representatives-only confidentiality restriction while reserving redaction of confidential details, and rejected the argument that UPC practice grants a German-style grace month. Provisional damages were confined to the fixed fee of EUR 3 000 because the value of the damages proceeding does not necessarily match that of the infringement proceeding and was not substantiated.