Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson v ASUSTEK Computer (CFI, ORD_23651/2025, 20 June 2025)

Date	20 June 2025
Court	CFI
Division	Milan (IT) Local Division
Type of action	Application Rop 333
Registry reference	App_22314/2025 · ORD_23651/2025
Parties	Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson

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 20 June 2025 (actions UPC CFI 318/2024 and 730/2024, EP 2 727 242), the Milan Local Division (Judges Perrotti, presiding, Zana, rapporteur, Lopes and Norrenbrock, technically qualified judge) dismissed Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson’s application for panel review of the judge-rapporteur’s refusal of an « external eyes only » confidentiality regime as against ASUSTEK Computer and Arvato Netherlands. It nonetheless granted Ericsson leave to appeal, so that the Court of Appeal can set a standard for the UPC. The order confirms that a confidentiality club limited to external representatives requires a real and proven competition risk.

Question

Can the holder of licensing data obtain an order restricting access to its highly confidential information to the opposing party’s external representatives, to the exclusion of any of its employees?

Decision

The application for review was admissible, since an order under Rule 262A concerns the conduct of proceedings (Rule 333.1), but it was dismissed. Ericsson accepted that such a regime is possible only where there is an actual and proven risk of conflict between patent enforcement and competition law. It merely repeated its earlier arguments: the US litigation and the fairness of licence negotiations have no bearing on competition risk, and the assertion that licensees compete with ASUSTEK applies to any FRAND dispute, without identifying the documents concerned or the risk arising from access by one employee bound by confidentiality. Leave to appeal was granted, as there is no other decision on the point.

Key points for practice

A party seeking an « external eyes only » regime must identify the documents concerned and show a concrete risk of distortion of competition from access by a designated employee. A general assertion common to FRAND disputes is not enough.

Provisions applied

Agreement on a Unified Patent Court: Arts 20, 42(2), 54, 58 and 73(2)(b)(ii)
Rules of Procedure: Rules 220.2, 224.1, 262.2, 262A and 333
Other instruments: Commission Communication 2020/C 242/01, paragraphs 61 et seq.

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

claimantTelefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson34 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 demande de réexamen est rejetée, faute pour Ericsson d'avoir démontré un risque concurrentiel concret justifiant de réserver l'accès aux seuls représentants externes. L'autorisation de faire appel est accordée.
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 2 727 242 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 2 727 242`	Mentioned in the analysis (role not qualified)	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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