LD Düsseldorf, October 16, 2025, order re. service of PI request under the Hague Convention

The Court ordered in accordance with R. 275.2 RoP that the steps already taken to bring the application for provisional measures to the attention of the defendant – here: fulfilling all requirements for service under the Hague Convention and asking the Defendant to voluntarily accept service – be regarded as good service, after the Chinese authorities had not disputed that the requirements under the Hague Convention were fulfilled but, instead, had merely informed the Local Division after several months that “no such company [exists] at the address provided”. Notably, the Applicant had conducted an independent verification of the address based on the Defendant’s business name provided on their Amazon page, based on the information provided by a local Chinese government agency, and based on “www.qcc.com”, a third party commercial corporate database providing data on companies registered in China.

In order to enable the Defendant to take note of the present order without service, it was ordered that a separate reference to the present order be made on the Court’s publicly available website.

The order stresses that the urgency of provisional measures justifies dispensing with further attempts at service and the six-month waiting period under Art. 15(2) Hague Convention.