2025-02-12 - CoA - Daedalus Prime v. Xiaomi - UPC_CoA_621/2024

1. Pursuant to R. 262A.6 RoP the number of persons to whom access is restricted shall be no greater than necessary in order to ensure compliance with the rights of the parties to the legal proceedings to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, and shall include, at least, one natural person from each party and the respective lawyers or other representatives of those parties to the legal proceedings. Whether a particular person may be granted full access under this provision must be determined on the basis of the relevant circumstances of the case, including the role of that person in the proceedings before this Court, the relevance of the confidential information to the performance of that role and the trustworthiness of the person in keeping the information confidential. 2. R. 262A.6 RoP does not require that the person to whom access is given be an employee of a party or a representative within the meaning of Art. 48 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (hereinafter: UPCA). Such a requirement does not follow from the wording of the provision and would unduly restrict a party’s freedom to choose its assistants in the proceedings. Therefore, the fact that the US attorneys are neither employees of Daedalus, nor representatives within the meaning of Art. 48 UPCA, does not preclude them from having full access to the confidential information under R. 262A RoP.

The Court of Appeal issued an order extending the confidentiality club under Rule 262A to two US attorney's setting aside the CFI's order which rejected access based on concerns that the information would be used in US proceedings. The CoA clarified that it found the concern unfounded as the US attorney's had assured to only use the information for the present UPC proceedings.