AMPERSAND Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten v Panasonic Holdings (CFI, 26 March 2025)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 26 March 2025 (UPC_CFI_210/2023, ORD_5519/2025), Judge-rapporteur Tochtermann, presiding judge of the Mannheim Local Division, provisionally and partly granted the law firm AMPERSAND Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten access to the file in Panasonic Holdings’ infringement action on EP 2 568 724 against Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications and OROPE Germany. Panasonic must provide redacted versions of the listed documents on an encrypted data carrier or through an encrypted online data room. The remainder of the application was rejected.

Question

To what extent, and how, may a third party relying on a general and academic interest obtain access to the file in a voluminous case?

Decision

Applying the Court of Appeal’s guidelines (UPC_CoA_404/2023) and taking account of the burden on the parties in a highly complex case, the judge limited access, for now, to the auxiliary request of 11 March 2025, leaving room for further interests to be specified later (paragraph 1). Access through the CMS was ruled out: the number of workflows, recurring system errors and submissions containing secrets without a matching confidentiality workflow meant it could not be ensured that only the intended documents would be released, so Panasonic must extract the documents as PDFs (paragraph 2). Within those limits, the general interest in UPC proceedings and the interest in contributing to academic publications justify access (paragraph 3).

Key points for practice

• Practical point: a targeted request for access stands a better chance in a voluminous case, and the judge may require a party to provide documents outside the CMS.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure

Rules 262.1(b) and 262.2

Case law cited

Court of Appeal, UPC_CoA_404/2023 (Ocado v Autostore)

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.