Avago Technologies International Sales v Tesla Germany (CFI, 16 June 2024)

Dhenne Avocats · 10 October 2026

Our analysis

Summary

By an order of 16 June 2024 (UPC_CFI_52/2023, ACT_462984/2023, APP_30430/2024), the judge-rapporteur of the Munich Local Division, Matthias Zigann, declared confidential under Rule 262A RoP the group-internal information contained in the written submission lodged on 24 May 2024 by Tesla Germany GmbH and Tesla Manufacturing Brandenburg SE, defendants in the infringement action on EP 1 838 002 brought by Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Limited. The order holds that protection must be decided even for a late submission.

Question

Must the court rule on the confidentiality of information in a submission lodged out of time, and can figures that are partly public be protected?

Decision

The submission, lodged outside the timetable of the written procedure, could be disregarded under Rule 9.2 RoP, the confidentiality request must nonetheless be decided, as the panel or the Court of Appeal might admit it. The claimant disputed the secrecy of data it said were public. The judge accepted that total production volumes and sales prices are public, but found it credible that the number of vehicles and the average sales price used by the defendants are not. Protection extends in particular to the security amount, the number of vehicles held, the sales period, the assumed average price, lost profit and conversion costs. The information may not be used or disclosed outside the proceedings, even after they end, on pain of a penalty payment of up to EUR 250,000 per breach.

Key points for practice

• Practical point: the public availability of aggregate data does not prevent protection of the internal figures a party derives from it for its own calculations, a Rule 262A RoP request should identify those figures precisely.

Provisions applied

Rules of Procedure

Rules 9.2 and 262A

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.