Huawei Technologies v HMD Global (CFI, 12 September 2025)

Date	12 September 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Mannheim (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_34682/2025 · ORD_34818/2025
Parties	HMD Global Oy

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 12 September 2025 (UPC_CFI_481/2025, App_34862/2025), the President of the Court of First Instance granted HMD Global’s application and changed the language of the proceedings from German to English, the language in which EP 3 667 981 was granted, in Huawei’s infringement action before the Mannheim Local Division. The order confirms that, where the parties are equally placed, the defendant’s position prevails.

Question

Is a change to the language in which the patent was granted justified under Art. 49(5) UPCA between two international groups of comparable size?

Decision

Yes. After consulting the panel (Rule 323.3), the President weighed all the circumstances in the light of the Court of Appeal’s case law. English is the language most used in the wireless communications technology concerned, as the exhibits show. Huawei’s arguments (earlier national litigation between the parties in Germany, its representatives’ command of German, the cost of references to parallel disputes) were not decisive. The two companies being comparably placed, the position of the defendant, which did not choose to sue and works under strict time limits, prevails. The application, filed before the Statement of Defence, causes no delay. The change is not conditional on any translation or interpretation arrangements.

Key points for practice

Between parties of comparable size, the balance tips in favour of the defendant, which did not choose the language.
An early application, made before the Statement of Defence, defeats the objection of delay.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Arts 49(1), (2) and (5) and 73(2)(a)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 220.1(c), 323 and 324
Case law cited: Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics, Court of Appeal, 17 April 2024, Court of Appeal, 18 September 2024 (UPC_CoA_354/2024), Munich Local Division, 18 August 2025 (UPC_CFI_460/2025), Paris Local Division, 8 September 2025 (UPC_CFI_583/2025)

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

claimantHMD Global Oy15 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 langue de procédure devient l'anglais, langue de délivrance du brevet, la position du défendeur prévalant entre deux groupes internationaux comparables.
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 3 667 981 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics (CoA, 17 April 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 3 667 981`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 1 other decision(s): Huawei Technologies v HMD Global (CFI, UPC_CFI_481/2025, 20 October 20	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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