UPC Vienna LD’s first-ever final judgment led to settlement on eve of appellate hearing; intervenor’s insistence on appellate review rejected

Context: Earlier this year, the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Vienna Local Division (LD) handed down its first-ever final judgment, and it was a permanent injunction in favor of SWARCO Futurit against construction giant STRABAG over a traffic signal patent (January 16, 2025 ip fray article). The only prior decision by the Vienna LD had been the denial of provisional measures (preliminary injunction (PI)) in a coffee machine case in September 2023, at the very early stages of the UPC.

What’s new: The CoA hearing scheduled for next week (December 4, 2025) has been canceled because STRABAG withdrew its appeal last week (November 21, 2025 CoA order: PDF (in German)). Chinese vendor Chainzone, whose products were at issue, sought to pursue the appeal nonetheless, but the CoA has decided (as expected) that an intervenor is bound by the procedural decisions of the party it supports (November 27, 2025 CoA order: PDF (in German)).

Direct impact:

• The timing of the withdrawal of STRABAG’s appeal suggests that SWARCO got significant leverage from the first-instance decision (it is highly unlikely that SWARCO believed it couldn’t realistically defend the first-instance ruling), but STRABAG presumably secured a significantly more favorable outcome, at least cost-wise, than if it had seen this case through and lost the appeal.
• Chainzone will not have been surprised by the outcome, but can point to its insistence on appellate review if SWARCO leverages the Vienna LD judgment against it in new procedural contexts, such as by seeking border seizures, which is one of the reasons for which Chainzone argued it should get its day in the appeals court. But Chainzone will still face an uphill battle in that situation, and it also has to bear the costs of the proceedings related to its insistence on appellate review.

Wider ramifications:

• Similarly situated intervenors in future cases may opt to point to this decision without incurring the costs of begging the CoA to let them pursue an appeal alone. They can furthermore point to the fact that even the timing of the withdrawal (when everyone was already pretty much prepared for the appellate hearing) did not bear weight with the CoA, rendering such petitions futile.
• This outcome is equally positive for the Vienna LD as if its ruling had been affirmed. Litigants prefer solutions. At a time where patentees increasingly look to diversify their venue strategy (November 24, 2025 ip fray article on Munich I Regional Court’s popularity) in light of the Munich LD being a case-clogged victim of its own success, Vienna is a venue with particular potential for docket growth.