LD Mannheim, September 9, 2024, procedural order, UPC_CFI_219/2023 and UPC_CFI_223/2023

Claimant filed its reply brief and defense to the counterclaim for revocation without redactions of the technical parts (infringement and validity). However, the non-technical/FRAND part was heavily redacted. An unredacted version of this non-technical part was made available to the Defendants subsequently.

Defendants filed their rejoinder brief and reply to the defense to the counterclaim for revocation – upon a requested and granted time extension – more than 3,5 months after receiving the reply brief. Moreover, Defendants requested a (further) two months extension of their deadline to file their non-technical rejoinder brief starting with the date from having access to the unredcated version of the non-technical part of the reply brief. Since only a two week shorter deadline was granted by the judge rapporteur, Defendants requested review of the judge rapporteur’s order by the panel.

The panel refused Defendant’s request. In particular, the Court pointed out that Defendants had already more than 3,5 months to prepare and file the technical part in their rejoinder and counterclaim for revocation reply brief and therefore almost 7 weeks for preparing exclusively the non-technical part of their rejoinder brief. As R. 29 (c) RoP stipulates only a one month deadline for filing a rejoinder brief when not dealing with an invalidity attack, it would not be justified to extend this deadline further. Moreover, the the Court would otherwise no longer have sufficient time to prepare the oral hearing.