Nanoval v ALD Vacuum Technologies (CFI, 22 July 2025)

Date	22 July 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Munich (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_23201/2025 · ORD_25245/2025
Parties	ALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH

Official decision (PDF) · UPC registry entry

Dhenne Avocats represents claimants and defendants in European patent disputes before the Unified Patent Court, including the Paris divisions.

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Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 22 July 2025 (UPC_CFI_63/2025, App_23201/2025), the Munich Local Division (Presiding Judge Zigann, Judge Pichlmaier as judge rapporteur, and Judge Schober) dismissed ALD Vacuum Technologies’ application to revoke the order for preservation of evidence and inspection granted to Nanoval on 3 February 2025 in respect of EP 3 083 107. The order draws a line between the length of the period for starting proceedings on the merits, which Rule 198.1 RoP fixes, and its starting point, which is left to the court’s discretion.

Question

Could the judge rapporteur, faced with late delivery of the expert’s report, move the starting point of the period for bringing the main action without breaching the prohibition on extending that period (Rule 9.4 RoP)?

Decision

Yes. The discretion over the starting point includes the power to change it later, in particular where the inspection report is delivered late. The order of 18 March 2025 had made the period run from the day the report could be made available to Nanoval, namely 2 April 2025, counted from the following day (Rule 300(a) RoP), the 31-day period expired on 3 May 2025, when the main action was filed, which was therefore in time. As no request for review under Rule 333 RoP had been lodged within 15 days, that order had in any event become final. ALD Vacuum bears the costs. The division also criticised its representative for misstating an earlier order and reminded it of the duty to present facts truthfully (Art. 48(6) UPCA and Rule 291 RoP).

Key points for practice

Practical point: a party objecting to a change in the starting point of the Rule 198.1 period must seek review within 15 days under Rule 333 RoP, otherwise it can no longer argue that the main action was filed late.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 48(6)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 9.4, 196.4, 198.1, 213.1, 291, 300(a) and 333
Case law cited: Avago v Realtek, 9 December 2024 (UPC_CFI_755/2024), Munich Local Division

Prepared by Dhenne Avocats from the official decision, consulted on 10 October 2026. The database is updated every week, on Friday. Only the official text is authoritative.

Going further

Lexicon: Written procedure (UPC), Court fees and costs (UPC).

Source and translations

Official source: Unified Patent Court registry link recorded in the record
Original language: not recorded
Translation available: no translation recorded the firm’s French record is a summary, not a translation
Date checked: not recorded

Only the official text is authoritative. A machine translation is never presented as official, republishing a third-party document requires a verified basis in rights, and a link to the source is preferred.

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Proceedings, related decisions, appeals, parties and patents as recorded in the registry and in the Dhenne Avocats corpus. Each link states its source.

Proceedings

No case number recorded in this record.

Parties

claimantALD Vacuum Technologies GmbH2 decisions in the corpus Follow this party

Exact name as it appears in the record, group affiliation only where sourced and dated.

Decisions in the same proceedings and documented appeals

No other decision in the corpus bears the same case number, and no appeal is documented in the corpus to date.

What the record states

Nature of the act: Generic application
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La juridiction peut modifier ultérieurement le point de départ du délai de la règle 198.1, notamment en cas de remise tardive du rapport d'expertise. L'action au fond introduite dans le délai ainsi recalculé est recevable et l'ordonnance de conservation des preuves est maintenue.
Appeal: No appeal documented in the corpus, this does not mean that no appeal was lodged.
Instance: First-instance decision, whether it has become final is not recorded.

Patents mentioned

EP 3 083 107 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Avago International Sales v Realtek Semiconductor (CFI, 9 December 2024) cited in this record

Scope: Dhenne Avocats corpus. Registry-based links are marked “official number”; links derived from the analyses are marked as such. An erroneous link can be withdrawn without deleting any record.

Patents and standards

Publication	Role in the dispute	Family	Standard and declaration	Pool	Sources
`EP 3 083 107`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 4 other decision(s): ALD France v Nanoval (CFI, 23 July 2026) · ALD France v Nanoval (CFI, 26 January 2026) · ALD France v Nanoval (CFI, 9 December 2025) · Nanoval v ALD Vacuum Technologies (CFI, 28 May 2025)	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet links not checked mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis

The statuses “asserted in litigation”, “declared essential”, “listed by a pool” and “essentiality examined by a court” are distinct and may coexist. Validity, infringement and technical essentiality are different questions. Scope: patents cited in the decisions of the Dhenne Avocats corpus, with no essentiality score or prediction.

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