Grundfos Holding v Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump (CFI, 26 February 2025)

Date	26 February 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Düsseldorf (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_8530/2025 · ORD_8568/2025
Parties	Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump Co., Ltd.

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 procedural order of 26 February 2025 (UPC_CFI_11/2024, ACT_2097/2024, CC_26515/2024, CC_32539/2024, App_8530/2025), the judge-rapporteur of the Düsseldorf Local Division (Presiding Judge Thomas) refused Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump, defendant to the infringement action brought by Grundfos Holding on EP 2 778 423, leave to file a further written submission. The order shows that a parallel foreign decision is not, on its own, enough to reopen the written procedure shortly before the hearing.

Question

Should the defendant be given leave under Rule 36 to file a further submission on the invalidation of the corresponding Chinese patent, declared void by the Chinese patent office on 6 January 2025 on the basis of the same prior art?

Decision

No. Relying on Rule 36 and on Ortovox v Mammut, Düsseldorf Local Division, 30 October 2024, the judge-rapporteur identified several obstacles: no reason was given for applying more than six weeks after the Chinese decision, the decision was produced only in Chinese, not in German, the language of the proceedings, filing on 8 March 2025, some two and a half weeks before the hearing on 27 March, would hamper the division’s preparation and prejudice the claimant, and nothing showed that the decision dealt with points not already argued. The defendant could answer the late-filing objection raised against its rejoinder on the counterclaim at the oral hearing.

Key points for practice

A parallel foreign decision must be reported and produced, translated, without delay: six unexplained weeks are enough to justify refusal.
Practical point: a Rule 36 application must show that the new material adds something the pleadings have not yet covered.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rule 36
Case law cited: Ortovox v Mammut, Düsseldorf Local Division, 30 October 2024 (UPC_CFI_16/2024).

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.

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

claimantHefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump Co., Ltd.7 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): L'autorisation de produire un mémoire supplémentaire sur la nullité du brevet chinois correspondant est refusée, faute de diligence, de traduction et d'élément nouveau, et en raison de la proximité de l'audience.
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 2 778 423 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Ortovox Sportartikel v Mammut Sports Group (CFI, 30 October 2024) cited in this record
Hartmann Packaging v Omni-Pac Ekco (CFI, 4 March 2025) cites this decision

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 2 778 423`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 5 other decision(s): Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump v Grundfos (CoA, UPC_CoA_622/2025, 27 Ma · Grundfos v Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump (CFI, 4 September 2026) · Grundfos v Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump (CFI, 27 May 2025) · Grundfos v Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump (CFI, 8 May 2025) · Grundfos v Hefei Xinhu Canned Motor Pump (CFI, 13 September 2024)	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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