UPC-Court of Appeal: Procedural decision on the extension of the time limit for filing the statement of defence on appeal

The Hamburg Local Division dismissed an infringement action and the counterclaim for revocation. The plaintiff appealed and requested protection of confidential information pursuant to R 262A and R 262.2 VerfO. The Court of Appeal ruled on these motions on July 17, 2025, and granted the defendant access to the unredacted version of the statement of appeal. Until then, the defendant had only had access to a redacted version. The defendant requested an extension of the deadline for the appeal response and any cross-appeal until October 17, 2025. In the opinion of the Court of Appeal, the requested one-month extension was excessive because the subsequently disclosed information concerned only a small part and the defendant was already familiar with the source code in question. However, a mere extension of one week or ten days – as requested by the plaintiff – would be too short, as new expert statements had to be taken into account. The deadline for filing the appeal response and the cross-appeal was extended until October 3, 2025 (UPC 12.8.2025, CoA 360/2025).