Malikie Innovations v Nintendo of Europe (CFI, 23 April 2025)

Date	23 April 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Hamburg (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Application RoP262A
Registry reference	App_12964/2025 · ORD_13311/2025
Parties	Malikie Innovations Ltd. v. Nintendo of Europe SE, Nintendo 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 order of 23 April 2025 (UPC_CFI_537/2024, ORD_13311/2025), Judge-rapporteur Schilling of the Hamburg Local Division confirmed as final the preliminary order of 18 March 2025 protecting under Rule 262A the sales and profit figures filed by Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Nintendo of Europe in their statement of defence and Exhibit BP08, in Malikie Innovations’ infringement action on EP 2 579 551, and extended access to two Malikie employees. The order states « March 23rd 2025 » as its date of issue, but it is signed on 23 April 2025 and cites an order of 22 April 2025.

Question

May the name of an employee witness be protected as a trade secret, and may protection extend to information the claimant obtains from a third party bound to the defendants by a confidentiality undertaking?

Decision

The sales and profit figures, whose secret nature was not disputed, fall within Rule 262A. Employees’ personal data, including a witness’s name, are not trade secrets but data protected by Regulation (EU) 2016/679, which Malikie must observe without any court order being needed. Weighing the right to be heard against the protection of secrets, the judge found the defendants’ request measured: information from a source bound to confidentiality towards them or their affiliates remains protected and may be used only in the proceedings and within the confidentiality club. Malikie must check that a third party disclosing information to it is not bound by such an obligation, which is not an undue burden.

Key points for practice

Practical point: a party receiving from a third party information covered by the order must check that the third party owes no duty of confidentiality to its opponent before using it outside the proceedings.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Arts 24(1)(a) and 58
Rules of Procedure: Rules 262A, 331.1, 334 and 335
Other provisions: Directive (EU) 2016/943, Arts 2(1) and 9, Regulation (EU) 2016/679
Case law cited: Ortovox Sportartikel v Mammut Sports Group, Düsseldorf Local Division, 22 April 2025, Munich Local Division, 10 March 2025, UPC_CFI_846/2024

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: Confidentiality club.

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

claimantMalikie Innovations Ltd.5 decisions in the corpus Follow this party
defendantNintendo of Europe SEFollow this party
defendantNintendo Co., Ltd.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: Application RoP262A
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): L'ordonnance provisoire de confidentialité est confirmée et l'accès étendu à deux salariés de Malikie. Le nom d'un témoin relève de la protection des données personnelles, et les informations issues d'une source tenue à la confidentialité envers les défenderesses restent protégées.
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 2 579 551 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Ortovox Sportartikel v Mammut Sports Group (CFI, ORD_7946/2025, 22 April 2025) 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 2 579 551`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): Malikie Innovations v Nintendo (CFI, UPC_CFI_537/2024, 28 October 2025 · Malikie Innovations v Nintendo of Europe (CFI, 18 November 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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