Fives ECL v REEl (CFI, 25 January 2024)

Date	25 January 2024
Court	CFI
Division	Hamburg (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Determination of damages and compensation
Registry reference	noordernumber559935/2023-applicationprocessedinhardcopyonly(outsideCMS)
Parties	Fives ECL, SAS v. REEl 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 an order of 25 January 2024, the Hamburg Local Division, seised by Fives ECL, SAS of an application for the determination of damages against REEL GmbH following a final judgment of the Düsseldorf Regional Court of 9 August 2022 finding infringement of the German part of EP 1 740 740, dismissed as inadmissible the application for panel review (Rule 333 RoP) of the judge-rapporteur’s decision of 17 November 2023 that had upheld REEL’s preliminary objection to jurisdiction. Leave to appeal was granted. The order draws the line between review and appeal.

Question

Can a decision of the judge-rapporteur upholding a preliminary objection and ending the proceedings be reviewed by the panel under Rule 333 RoP, directly or by analogy?

Decision

Rule 333.1 RoP covers only case management orders and decisions. A decision ending the proceedings is not one of them, and Rule 102.2 RoP does not apply since the decision was taken in the written procedure. Application by analogy was rejected for want of an unintended gap and of comparable interests: review exists because interlocutory orders cannot be appealed on their own, whereas a decision upholding the objection is directly appealable (Rule 220.1(a) RoP). Neither Article 8(1) nor Article 41 UPCA requires a panel decision, Rule 20 RoP assigning preliminary objections to the judge-rapporteur. The Helsinki order relied on does not conflict, the panel having ruled there only because the objection was heard together with an application for provisional measures. No interim conference was held, the costs of the review were borne by Fives ECL and leave to appeal was granted on questions of principle (Rule 220.2 RoP).

Key points for practice

Practical point: against a judge-rapporteur’s decision upholding a preliminary objection, the remedy is an appeal under Rule 220.1(a) RoP within time, not a review under Rule 333 RoP.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 8(1), 41 and 73(2)(b)
Statute of the Court: Art. 19(2)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 19, 20, 102.2, 220.1, 220.2, 224.1, 331.1, 333 and 335
Case law cited: Helsinki Local Division, 28 August 2023, UPC_CFI_214/2023

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: Patent infringement action.

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.

Follow this case

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

defendantREEl GmbHnormalised name: REEL GmbH8 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
claimantFives ECL, SAS3 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: Determination of damages and compensation
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La demande de réexamen par la formation de la décision de la juge rapporteure accueillant l'exception préliminaire est irrecevable, cette décision étant directement susceptible d'appel. L'appel de l'ordonnance est autorisé.
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 1 740 740 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

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 1 740 740` Compact service module which is intended for electrolytic aluminium production plants recorded proprietor: Fives ECL SAS	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 10 other decision(s): Fives ECL v REEL (CoA, 17 July 2026) · Fives ECL v REEL (CoA, 17 June 2026) · REEL International v Fives ECL (CFI, 24 March 2026) · Fives ECL v REEL (CFI, 11 February 2026) · Fives ECL v REEL (CoA, 16 January 2025) · Fives ECL v REEL (CFI, 17 November 2023) · Fives ECL v REEL (CoA, 14 October 2026) · Fives ECL v REEL (CoA, UPC_CoA_42/2026, 26 October 2026)	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet · European Patent Register existence and title of the publication checked on 30 October 2026 (Google Patents, Espacenet and Register links are not checked automatically) 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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