Context: The Unified Patent Court (UPC) announced last month that two more judges were appointed to the Munich Local Division (LD) and one more to the Mannheim Local Division (April 30, 2024 ip fray article).
What’s new: Today the UPC also announced the appointments to the Milan Central Division of judges from Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. And as a follow-up to last month’s announcement, the UPC published the panel compositions for Munich and Mannheim, the two LDs that now have two panels each.
Direct impact: The judicial style will likely be more consistent in Mannheim, where full-time UPC Judge Dr. Peter Tochtermann will preside over both panels, than in Munich, where there is one panel of Munich judges and one of Dusseldorf judges.
Wider ramifications: The basic idea of UPC panels always including at least one judge from another country is a good one, as is the notion that the most qualified judges should be appointed. But the UPC does not appear to take climate change into consideration in the slightest when it appoints a judge from Munich to the Milan Central Division (CD) at essentially the same time as two judges from Dusseldorf (at least one of whom presumably still lives there) are assigned to the Munich LD.
Let’s start with the panel compositions on the Munich and Mannheim LDs:
- In Munich, Presiding Judge Dr. Matthias Zigann and Judge Tobias Pichlmaier are members of Panel 1, while Panel 2 is composed of Presiding Judge Ulrike Voss (“Voß” in German) and Judge Daniel Voss (equally “Voß” in German). Panel 1 could be described as the “Munich-Munich” panel: you get the UPC flavor of the Munich judicial approach to patent cases. Panel 2 is the “Dusseldorf-Vosses” panel: two judges originating from Dusseldorf, and both named Voss (they are not known to be relatives).
- In Mannheim, Presiding Judge Dr. Peter Tochtermann presides over Panel 1 and Panel 2. On Panel 1, he is joined by Judge Dr. Holger Kircher, and on Panel 2 by Judge Dirk Boettcher (“Böttcher” in German). All Mannheim judges are actually from Mannheim.
Now, the judges of the new Milan CD:
- Judge Andrea Postiglione from Rome;
- Judge Anna-Lena Klein from Munich; and
- Judge Marije Knijff from the Hague.
Judge Klein has heard numerous patent infringement cases while serving on the Munich I Regional Court. Her appointment to the UPC made a whole lot of sense, but why Milan? Why send a judge from Munich to Milan instead of appointing her to the Munich LD, which is just being reinforced anyway?
It appears that the UPC’s leadership was more interested in diluting the Munich LD’s consistency (as those filing new cases won’t know whether their case will really be adjudicated as a Munich case or heard by Dusseldorf judges) than in minimizing air travel by judges.
As a result of these assignments, each Central Division now has one German judge: Judge Professor Maximilian Haedicke in Paris, Judge Ulrike Voss in Munich and Judge Anna-Lena Klein in Milan. No other nationality is represented on each Central Division.
One can obviously make the counterargument to the climate change issue that those patent cases involve so much air travel by parties and counsel that travel by UPC judges constitutes only a small part of the UPC’s overall carbon footprint.