Panasonic Holdings v Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications (CFI, ORD_3236/2025, 25 February 2025)

Date	25 February 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Munich (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Application Rop 333
Registry reference	App_516/2025 · ORD_3236/2025
Parties	Panasonic Holdings Corporation

Official decision (PDF) · UPC registry entry

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Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 25 February 2025 (UPC_CFI_208/2023), the panel of the Munich Local Division (Judges Zigann, Pichlmaier, Kupecz and Rydman), on an application for review under Rule 333, confirmed the judge-rapporteur’s order of 23 December 2024 (ORD_67681/2024), which had limited the refund of court fees to 40% after the settlement-driven withdrawal of the infringement action brought by Panasonic Holdings on EP 2 197 132 against Guangdong OPPO Mobile Telecommunications and OROPE Germany, and of the counterclaims. The order applies Rule 370.9(e) to a particularly demanding case.

Question

Can parties withdrawing after a settlement obtain a 60% refund of court fees (Rule 370.9(b)(i)) where it is not established that they were notified of the closure of the written procedure?

Decision

No. The panel left open whether the written procedure is closed de facto once all pleadings have been exchanged (Rule 12.1), without formal notice. It noted that the staggered refund is meant to reflect the work the court has already done, and that Rule 370.9(e) allows the refund to be refused or reduced in exceptional cases. That was so here, in a highly complex infringement dispute fought intensively until withdrawal, with numerous interlocutory applications: the 60% request was rejected and the refund kept at 40% per party.

Key points for practice

The refund rate under Rule 370.9(b) is not guaranteed: the workload the division has actually borne can justify a reduction under Rule 370.9(e).
Practical point: in a heavy case, settlement negotiations should allow for a refund of court fees below the expected scale.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rules 12.1, 333 and 370.9(b) and (e)
Case law cited: Mannheim Local Division, 4 February 2025 (UPC_CFI_223/2023).

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: Application Rop 333
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La formation confirme le remboursement de 40 % des frais de justice et rejette la demande de 60 %, la complexité exceptionnelle de l'affaire justifiant une réduction au titre de la règle 370.9(e).
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 2 197 132 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 2 197 132`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 2 other decision(s): Panasonic v Xiaomi (CFI, 4 December 2023) · Panasonic v Xiaomi (CFI, 27 November 2023)	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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