Court of Appeal, December 1, 2025, appeal against an order re. change of the language of proceedings

The CoA dismissed an appeal against an order by the President of the Court of First Instance changing the language of the proceedings from German to English, finding that the President “rightly exercised her discretion when assessing fairness” under the established case law of the CoA in Apple v Ona in particular for two reasons: First, English is the common language used in the relevant field of technology (wireless communication and mobile networks). Second, the language commonly used by both companies and especially within the group of the defendant as the working language and for the internal communication is English.

In contrast the CoA regarded the facts that there were parallel proceedings before a German Court and that the representatives and (at least) two jugdges of the panel deciding the case were German speaking as less relevant, because those were not circumstances related to the parties themselves. The party itself is then still dependent on translations of the statements and evidence lodged on either side which takes time and incurs costs to prepare or, where machine translations are used, to check and correct translations, in a context
where the defendant is bound to strict time limits to lodge its Statement of defense.

Interestingly, the CoA consulted the panel of the Local Division by way of analogy to R. 323.3 RoP before making its decision, and the LD’s Presiding Judge confirmed that the language of the proceedings should not be changed again and that “English language objectively offers everyone the same ability to understand and express themselves”.