Panasonic Holdings v OROPE Germany (CFI, 17 September 2024)

Date	17 September 2024
Court	CFI
Division	Mannheim (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_52033/2024 · ORD_52137/2024
Parties	Panasonic Holdings Corporation

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 17 September 2024 (UPC_CFI_210/2023, App_52033/2024), the presiding judge and judge-rapporteur of the Mannheim Local Division (P. Tochtermann) rejected the application by Panasonic Holdings Corporation to have its own party expert heard as a witness at the oral hearing of 7, 8 and 10 October 2024, in its action for infringement of EP 2 568 724 against OROPE Germany GmbH and Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications Corp. Ltd., which have filed a FRAND counterclaim. The order distinguishes witness evidence, which concerns facts, from expert opinion.

Question

May a party, after the interim procedure has closed, have its expert heard as a witness to criticise the method of the opposing expert?

Decision

The application was lodged on the evening of 16 September 2024, after the interim procedure had formally closed (Rule 110), further submissions are admitted only in special circumstances, of which there were none. The time for the rejoinder on the FRAND counterclaim, from 19 August to 16 September 2024, had been set by the court after hearing the parties, roughly in line with Rule 29(c), and Panasonic had not sought an extension. Above all, a witness gives evidence of disputed and relevant facts. The expert was instead to explain his view that the opposing expert evidence was methodologically flawed, which is not a fact in the legal sense. Nothing at this stage warranted hearing the expert under Rule 181, should that become necessary, it would be ordered under Rule 114.

Key points for practice

Practical point: a methodological critique of the opposing expert evidence belongs in the written pleadings and, where appropriate, an expert hearing ordered by the court, not in witness evidence sought after the interim procedure has closed.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rules 29, 110, 114 and 181

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: Standard essential patent (SEP), FRAND offer and counter-offer, Injunctions and standard essential patents.

Dhenne Avocats blog: FRAND at the UPC: What the Court Has Decided, What Remains Open.

Publications by Matthieu Dhenne: Munich’s FRAND Guidelines: A Compass Drawn Too Finely, Tesla v. InterDigital and the FRAND Undertaking Inside the Pool (Kluwer Patent Blog).

Further reading: M. Dhenne, “Calculation of FRAND Royalties: An Overview of Practices Around the World”, European Intellectual Property Review 2019, vol. 41, no. 12, p. 754. M. Dhenne, “Conversant v LG: What about FRAND in France?”, European Intellectual Property Review 2019, vol. 41, no. 9, p. 585.

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.

Follow this case

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

claimantPanasonic Holdings Corporation47 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 demande d'audition de l'expert de partie comme témoin est rejetée : elle est tardive, aucun fait n'est en cause, l'avis méthodologique d'un expert n'étant pas un fait au sens juridique, et rien ne justifie à ce stade une audition au titre de la règle 181.
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 2 568 724 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

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 2 568 724` Radio Communication Device and Radio Communication Method recorded proprietor: Panasonic Intellectual Property Corp of America	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 25 other decision(s): Panasonic v Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecomm (CFI, UPC_CFI_210/2023, 6 F · Panasonic Holdings v Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications (CFI, 22 · AMPERSAND Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten v Panasonic Holdings (CFI, · Panasonic Holdings v Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications (CFI, 3 · Panasonic Holdings v OROPE Germany (CFI, 22 November 2024) · Xiaomi Technology Germany v Panasonic Holdings (CoA, 30 September 2024 · Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications v Panasonic Holdings (CoA, 24 · Panasonic Holdings v Xiaomi Technology Germany (CFI, 16 September 2024	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet · European Patent Register existence and title of the publication checked on 30 October 2026 (Google Patents, Espacenet and Register links are not checked automatically) 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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