UPC Court of Appeal confirms that extensions are at the discretion of the Court of First Instance

In a decision handed down on 30 September 2024, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the Mannheim Local Division to limit additional time for preparing a rejoinder on non-technical aspects of case to six weeks, rather than the requested two months.

When filing their reply to the statement of defence, Panasonic provided a reply with no redactions on technical points of the dispute, but containing redactions on the non-technical FRAND points of dispute. Following submission of a fully unredacted version of Panasonic’s reply in July, Xiaomi requested that they be given the full two months allowed for preparing the rejoinder to the reply, running only from the date the fully unredacted reply became available.

At first instance, the Mannheim Local Division refused this request, granting only six weeks from the date that the unredacted reply became available. The Panel reasoned that as Xiaomi had had access to the technical points of Panasonic’s reply, they did not need the full two-month period just to prepare their rejoinder on the non-technical points.

Xiaomi appealed this, arguing that Mannheim’s decision contrasted those of Hamburg and Munich’s Local Divisions, and hence that clarification of an inconsistent view was needed. Whilst not citing specific judgements, Xiaomi was likely referring to the Hamburg Local Division’s decision of 5 December 2023 (UPC_CFI_54/2023), and the Munich Local Division’s decision of 4 July 2024 (UPC_CFI_220/2023), in which periods for responding were deemed not to begin until an unredacted version of submissions had been received by the relevant parties.

The Court of Appeal refused this request however, stating definitively that “The period by which a Court extends a deadline in a particular case is at the discretion of the Court”, and dismissed Xiaomi’s request for discretionary review. This is a fuirtehr example of the UPC taking an extremely strict view on the appropriateness of granting extensions of time.

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