BF exaQC v NVIDIA (CFI, 16 January 2025)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 16 January 2025, the President of the Court of First Instance, Florence Butin, dismissed the application by NVIDIA Corporation and NVIDIA GmbH to change the language of proceedings from German to English, the language of grant, in the infringement action brought by BF exaQC and ParTec before the Munich Local Division (UPC_CFI_627/2024, EP 3 743 812 and EP 2 628 080). The order weighs the parties’ positions and, in particular, access to justice for a medium-sized company facing a very large group.

Question

Is a change of the language of proceedings to the language of grant justified on grounds of fairness where English is customary in the technical field but most parties are established in Germany?

Decision

English is admittedly the language commonly used in the technical field. However, three of the four companies, including both claimants, are established in Germany, which gave the claimants legitimate grounds to sue in German, and nothing showed that they use English internally. NVIDIA Corporation has far greater means than ParTec, allowing it to proceed in a foreign language without significant inconvenience, and it had not shown any material impairment of its defence. Fair access to justice for medium-sized enterprises is an important objective of the UPCA. The claimants’ US action against Microsoft carried little weight, in line with Court of Appeal guidance. The order may be appealed within fifteen days.

Key points for practice

• The parties’ relative size and resources weigh in the fairness assessment under Art. 49(5) UPCA, in favour of a medium-sized claimant suing in the language of its seat.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

Arts 49(1), 49(5) and 73(2)(a)

Rules of Procedure

Rules 220 and 323

Case law cited

Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics, Court of Appeal, 17 April 2024, Court of Appeal, 5 September 2024, UPC_CoA_207/2024, Court of Appeal, 18 September 2024, UPC_CoA_354/2024

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.