Husqvarna v POSITEC Germany (CFI, 16 July 2025)

Date	16 July 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Düsseldorf (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Generic application
Registry reference	App_30013/2025 · ORD_31254/2025
Parties	POSITEC Germany GmbH

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.

Contact the firm

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By order of 16 July 2025 (UPC_CFI_351/2025, APP_30013/2025), the President of the Court of First Instance, Florence Butin, after consulting the panel of the Düsseldorf Local Division, granted the application of POSITEC Germany, defendant in Husqvarna’s infringement action under EP 3 978 304, and changed the language of the proceedings from German to English, the language in which the patent was granted. The order applies the Court of Appeal’s test, which centres on the defendant’s position.

Question

Does fairness under Art. 49(5) UPCA require a switch to the language of the patent where the defendant, a German subsidiary, is sued in German?

Decision

Yes. Although POSITEC’s headquarters have the means to be sued in the official language of the country where it operates, its internal working environment must be taken into account, since its legal and technical staff must support the defence: German puts it at a disadvantage. Husqvarna, which chose the division and had previously corresponded with POSITEC in English, is not disadvantaged, English not being an official language in Sweden either. The field of robotic lawnmowers is mainly English-speaking, as the statement of claim itself accepts. The EPO opposition carries little weight and the early change will not delay the proceedings. The order is not conditional on translation arrangements. Costs are left to the merits.

Key points for practice

Practical point: a subsidiary sued in the language of its country may obtain a switch to the language of the patent by showing the working language of the group teams handling the defence.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Art. 49(1), (2) and (5), and Art. 73(2)(a)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 220.1(c) and 323
Case law cited: Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics, 17 April 2024, Court of Appeal (UPC_CoA_101/2024, paragraphs 22 to 25 and 34), Court of Appeal, 18 September 2024 (UPC_CoA_354/2024, paragraphs 26 and 27)

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: Written procedure (UPC), Court fees and costs (UPC).

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

claimantPOSITEC Germany GmbHFollow 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 langue de procédure passe de l'allemand à l'anglais, langue de délivrance d'EP 3 978 304, au regard de la situation de la défenderesse et du caractère anglophone du domaine technique.
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 3 978 304 mentioned in: summary of the decision, Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

Curio Bioscience v 10x Genomics (CoA, 17 April 2024) 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 3 978 304`	Patent at issue according to the summary or official headnote	not recorded	not recorded	not recorded	Espacenet links not checked mentioned in: summary of the decision, 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.

Receive an alert

Weekly summary of new records and substantive updates matching what you follow. Address confirmed by email, unsubscribe at any time, one email per week even where several of your follows match.