Sunstar Engineering Europe v CeraCon (CFI, 6 June 2025)

Date	6 June 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Mannheim (DE) Local Division
Type of action	Amend Document
Registry reference	App_20490/2025 · ORD_20589/2025
Parties	Sunstar Engineering Europe 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

In Sunstar Engineering Europe’s action against CeraCon for indirect infringement of EP 4 108 413, the judge rapporteur of the Mannheim Local Division read the request for a declaration of liability for damages broadly: it already covers sales of CeraPUR sealing material and maintenance contracts, so the clarification made in the reply is not an amendment under Rule 263. The order shows that a poorly worded request may be rescued by interpretation rather than by leave to amend.

Question

Is a clarification of a damages request, so as to cover transactions ancillary to the infringing machines, an amendment of the claim requiring leave under Rule 263?

Decision

Request IV as filed is read as seeking a declaration that the general requirements for damages are met, including for CeraPUR sales and service contracts where relevant to the amount. Its clarification needs no leave and would in any event be allowed as the correction of an obvious oversight.

To the extent the request would bindingly establish liability for those transactions, the decision is postponed until after the oral hearing and transferred to the panel. CeraCon may address the point in its rejoinder.

Key points for practice

UPC judges construe requests in light of the whole brief: an omission in the wording does not always call for an application for leave to amend.
Whether a binding finding of liability for ancillary sales can be made is left to the merits.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure: Rules 125 et seq. and 263
Case law cited: Mannheim Local Division, 14 May 2025, UPC_CFI_132/2024

Related decisions

CeraCon v Sunstar Engineering, 6 June 2025, order of the same day on the counterclaim for revocation.

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

claimantSunstar Engineering Europe GmbH2 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: Amend Document
Outcome (Dhenne Avocats summary): La demande de dommages et intérêts est interprétée comme couvrant déjà les ventes accessoires et les contrats de service, sa clarification n'exigeant pas d'autorisation. Le surplus est renvoyé à la formation après l'audience.
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 4 108 413 mentioned in: Dhenne Avocats analysis Follow this patent

Related decisions cited in the analyses

CeraCon v Sunstar Engineering (CFI, 6 June 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 4 108 413`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified) Also mentioned in 4 other decision(s): CeraCon v Sunstar Engineering (CoA, 2 September 2025) · Sunstar Engineering Europe v CeraCon (CFI, 8 August 2025) · CeraCon v Sunstar Engineering (CFI, 6 June 2025) · Sunstar Engineering Europe v CeraCon (CFI, 30 May 2025)	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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