Ona Patents v Apple Retail Germany (CFI, 18 June 2024)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By an order of 18 June 2024 (UPC_CFI_99/2024, APP_26610/2024), the President of the Court of First Instance, Florence Butin, dismissed the application by Apple Retail Germany B.V. & Co. KG, Apple Inc. and three other group companies, defendants in Ona Patents SL’s infringement action on EP 2 263 098 before the Düsseldorf Local Division, to change the language of the proceedings from German to English, the language in which the patent was granted. The balancing takes into account how the defendant is organised to litigate in German.

Question

Does fairness require a change to the language of the patent (Art. 49(5) UPCA) where the defendant has extensive resources and is organised to handle disputes in German?

Decision

The application, lodged as a generic Rule 9 RoP application, was admissible. Applying the Court of Appeal’s order of 17 April 2024, she found that the claimant had relevant reasons to sue in German: the language skills of its contact person, the registered offices of two defendants in Germany, and parallel proceedings in Germany handled with limited resources compared with Apple’s. While English is the language of the technology and the defendants’ corporate language, Apple has organised itself to handle patent disputes in German, including through an in-house German litigator, and has extensive legal resources. The change would be a significant drawback for the claimant and only a slight advantage for the defendants. The application was dismissed, without translation or interpretation conditions.

Key points for practice

• Practical point: a defendant seeking the language of the patent should expect its resources and internal organisation for litigating in the division’s language to weigh in the balance.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Art. 49(1), (2) and (5)

Rules of Procedure

Rules 4.1, 9.1, 321 and 323

Case law cited

Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics, Court of Appeal, 17 April 2024 (UPC_CoA_101/2024), Aarke v SodaStream Industries, Düsseldorf Local Division, 16 January 2024 (UPC_CFI_373/2023), The Hague Local Division, 18 October 2023, UPC_CFI_225/2023, Mannheim Local Division, 15 April 2024, UPC_CFI_410/2023

Related decisions

• Ona Patents v Google Ireland, 18 June 2024, order of the same day dismissing an identical request by Google in the parallel action (UPC_CFI_100/2024).

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.