Context: Two weeks ago, ip fray reported on a plan by Mr Justice Richard Meade of the England & Wales High Court to reach out to this colleagues on the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and two German national courts (Mannheim Regional Court, Munich I Regional Court) regarding his forthcoming FRAND rate-setting decision concerning Panasonic’s disputes with Xiaomi and OPPO (July 17, 2024 ip fray article). It appeared unlikely that the parties were going to dissuade him from that idea.
What’s new: On July 25, Mr Justice Meade’s letter indeed went out to his colleagues Judge (Presiding Judge, UPC Munich LD) Dr. Matthias Zigann, Judge Edger Brinkman (UPC The Hague LD, but helping out on German panels rather frequently), Judge Tobias Pichlmaier (UPC Munich LD), Judge Dr. Peter Tochtermann (UPC Mannheim LD), Judge Dr. Georg Werner (Munich I Regional Court) and Judge Dirk Boettcher (“Böttcher” in German) (UPC Mannheim LD and Mannheim Regional Court). According to the letter, the UK FRAND trial will start the week of October 28, and barring the unforeseeable, the decision will come down before Christmas.
Direct impact: The UPC and the German courts don’t have to wait for the UK decision, but they may find it prudent in the interest of justice as well as judicial economy.
Wider ramifications: The last days of October promise to be very important on the “FRAND front” with a two-day UPC trial over a standard-essential patent (SEP) Huawei is asserting against Netgear (October 30 and 31) (June 20, 2024 ip fray article), a VoiceAge EVS v. HMD appellate hearing in the Munich Higher Regional Court on October 31 with the European Commission intervening as a critic of the lower Munich court’s (and potentially all German patent infringement courts’) SEP case law (March 26, 2024 ip fray article).
There’s nothing new since the previous post on this dispute other than Mr Justice Meade’s letter to his continental colleagues actually having gone out:
At this point, ip fray is not aware of definitive hearing/trial dates in the UPC and the German courts, though it appears that something may happen in October in a Panasonic v. OPPO case before the UPC’s Mannheim LD (June 27, 2024 ip fray article).