Innovative Sonic v Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications (CoA, 1 December 2025)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

The Court of Appeal upholds the order of the President of the Court of First Instance of 18 August 2025, which had changed the language of the infringement proceedings brought by Innovative Sonic Corporation against OPPO and eight other companies before the Munich Local Division (UPC_CFI_460/2025) from German to English, the language of EP 2 765 731. The decision confirms that fairness under Art. 49(5) UPCA turns mainly on the parties’ concrete situation, particularly that of the defendant, and that the language skills of representatives or machine translations do not make up for a party’s own understanding.

Question

Was the change to English justified on grounds of fairness, given that the case is pending before a German local division, parallel actions are pending before the Munich Regional Court and the defendants’ representatives speak German?

Decision

The appeal is dismissed. English is commonly used in the relevant technical field and within the OPPO group, and is neutral for Innovative Sonic (paragraph 9), the President rightly exercised the discretion (paragraph 10). A party must be able to understand fully what its representative submits on its behalf, and machine translations are not sufficient (paragraph 11). The parallel actions before the Munich Regional Court and the representatives’ skills carry little weight (paragraph 12). All judges of the panel speak English, and the presence of a German-speaking judge cannot be guaranteed (paragraph 13). The Local Division panel, consulted by analogy with Rule 323.3 RoP, considered it prudent not to change the language again (paragraph 14).

Key points for practice

• A party resisting a change of language cannot rely on the language skills of the other side’s lawyers or on machine translations (paragraphs 11 and 12).
• The fact that the case is pending before a German local division does not prevent a change to English (paragraph 13).

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Art. 49(5)

Rules of Procedure

Rule 323

Case law cited

Apple v Ona, Court of Appeal, 18 September 2024, Court of Appeal, 17 April 2024, UPC_CoA_101/2024.

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.