Court of Appeal, July 3, 2025, order re. members of confidentiality club, UPC_CoA_221/2025 et al

According 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 right 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.

As a general principle, a party is free to decide which attorneys it wishes to engage to assist it in the proceedings (above cited CoA Order of 12 February 2025, Daedalus v Xiaomi, para. 16).

It follows that a party may decide to engage its trusted advisor to assist the team of UPC representatives (…).

In order to ensure the right of Claimant to a fair trial, it is thus necessary that one of Claimant’s US attorneys has access to all information available, including the confidential information, and Claimant’s right to an effective remedy outweighs the interest of Defendant in restricting the access to the confidential information.

The UPC representatives of Claimant, in addition to the assistance of two employees of Claimant who have been granted access to the confidential information, already benefit from the assistance of a technical expert selected by Claimant, who has been granted access to the confidential information.

As the appointed technical expert can address the technical understanding and analysis of the case and adequately assist Claimant’s representatives for the purpose of the UPC proceedings, there is no need to also grant another US attorney-at-law of Claimant with regard to his technical qualifications as an engineer access to the confidential information in the case-at-hand.