2026-08-18 - LD The Hague - Dolby v. Acer et al. - UPC-CFI-0001536/2025

1. Review of an order to accept a counterclaim for rate-setting against an intervener (Pool administrator) denied. 2. R. 315.4 RoP entails that an intervener is to be treated as a party, unless otherwise ordered by the Court. This means as a principle that a counterclaim (for rate-setting) may be directed to such intervening party. The more so since Vectis intervened on the side of claimant, Dolby. According to the principle of “equal treatment” (CoA 27 November 2025, UPC_CoA_70/2025 (Strabag), m.n. 16), a counterclaim directed at the party the intervener supports may also be directed at the intervener. 3. The Court may also rely on R. 305 RoP. It makes further sense to include Vectis as a proper party (on the side of Dolby), since it already intervened voluntarily and unopposed and at an early stage of the proceedings, rendering it possible to file a (counter)claim against it.

The Hague Local Division panel, sitting on a R. 333 RoP review of its judge-rapporteur's order of 1 May 2026, refused to declare inadmissible a defendants' counterclaim for FRAND rate-setting directed at an intervener. It held that R. 315.4 RoP makes an intervener a party unless the Court orders otherwise, so a counterclaim may in principle be directed at it, and that under the equal-treatment principle of CoA Strabag a counterclaim aimed at the supported party may equally be aimed at the intervener. Because a counterclaim concerning licences is by Art. 32(1)(a) UPCA a related defence to the infringement action, and the intervener is bound by the decision under R. 316.3 RoP, letting the intervener co-defend the supported party while forcing the defendants into fresh proceedings against it would be incoherent. The intervener's inability to bring an action itself under Art. 47 UPCA limits who may sue, not who may be joined, and its market position and FRAND commitments are questions of substance reserved for the decision after the oral hearing. In the alternative the panel relied on R. 305 RoP to add the intervener as a proper party, refused a separate deadline regime for want of legitimate interest, and granted leave to appeal because the point is undecided by the Court of Appeal. Note on the corpus: this node is a second registry publication of the decision already stored at node 183759 (same case number, same date of delivery, 8 July 2026); the two PDFs are not byte-identical, so the automatic duplicate reconciliation does not link them.