CeraCon v Sunstar Engineering (UPC_CoA_807/2025)
Decision date:
02 September 2025
Osborne Clarke summary
- This was a decision of the Court of Appeal on a request for discretionary review of a procedural order.
- CeraCon was the claimant in a counterclaim for revocation in pending infringement proceedings in the Mannheim LD. Its application to amend its revocation claim to introduce two novelty attacks had been rejected by the judge-rapporteur and again on review by the LD panel. It requested discretionary review of the Mannheim LD's order under Rule 220.3 RoP.
- The Court of Appeal refused CeraCon's request.
- CeraCon had failed to demonstrate that the Mannheim LD had been manifestly wrong in upholding the judge-rapporteur's order. Without it having provided "convincing explanations" as to why the prior art had previously (seemingly accidentally) been missed, the Mannheim LD "did not go beyond the boundaries of its discretion" in deciding that CeraCon had failed to show that it could not have made the amendment with reasonable diligence earlier in the proceedings, as required by Rule 263.2(a) RoP.
Issue
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