UPC_CFI_449/2025 – Hewlett Packard (“HP”) v Zhuhai and Andreas Rentmeister

Expert Commentary

Service PI proceedings Facts 1. On 28 May 2025, HP filed proceedings for a preliminary injunction against Zhuhai and Andreas Rentmeister, a German company. 2. Service was initiated via the official online portal of the Chinese Central Authority on 4 June 2025. 3. After inquiry, the Court got the message from the Central Authority on 23 September 2025 that service had not taken place because the defendant did not reside at the address provided. 4. The applicant requests the Court to declare, pursuant to R. 275.2 RoP, that the service shall be deemed effective and that the order shall be published on the website of the Court. The Court 1. The Court cites all the evidence given by the applicant that the address – contrary to what the Chinese authorities stated – is the correct address. 2. The Court further cites Art. 15(2) and 15(3) of The Hague Convention. 3. The Court states that there are no other alternatives of service under R. 275.1 RoP and allows the request. Comment 1. The Court states that it applies R. 275 RoP under 2 (which states that the Court may order that an alternative method is good service) also with respect to an application for a preliminary injunction, despite the fact that the Rules of Procedure only mention a ‘Statement of Claim’. That in my opinion makes sense. 2. However, as already stated before, I find it difficult to understand why the Court has waited four months and required considerable efforts from the claimant. More specifically, it is unclear why the claimant did not make clear in his application that the Chinese defendant was or should have been aware of the application for a preliminary injunction or why reference was not made to Art. 15.3 of The Hague Convention (allowing provisional measures in case of urgency). 3. It had never been the intention of the The Hague Convention that in urgent cases you would not be able to act immediately, especially if you make sure that the defendant knows or should know about the application.

Full Decision Text

Düsseldorf Local Division UPC_CFI_449/2025 Order of the Court of First Instance issued on 16 October 2025 concerning EP 2 826 630 B1 and EP 3 530 469 B1 Headnotes: If an application for provisional measures is to be served under the Hague Convention, and the authority responsible for the service informs the Court several months after the request that ser- vice cannot be effected because the defendant does not exist at the provided address, the Court may deem the steps taken so far sufficient for proper service, provided that the applicant has credibly demonstrated that the address at which service was attempted is correct. Keywords: R. 275.2 RoP; service; alternative method; application for provisional measures 1 APPLICANT: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., 10300 Energy Drive, Spring, Texas 77389, USA Represented by: Attorney-at-law Vanessa Werlin, Freshfields Part mbB, Maximilansplatz 13, 80333 Munich, Germany Electronic address for service: vanessa.werlin@freshfields.com contributing: Patent Attorney Dr Wolfgang Lippich, Patent Attorney Alex- ander von Poswik, Patent Attorney Martin Janovec, Widenmayerstraße 6, 80538 Munich, Germany DEFENDANTS: 1. Zhuhai ouguan Electronic Technology Co., Ltd, Room 712-2, Building 2, No. 2288, Mingzhu South Road Qianshan, Xiangzhou District Zhuhai City, Guangdong, 519060, China [2. Andreas Rentmeister e.K., Rufacherstr. 7, 79910 Freiburg, Germany] Defendant 2. represented by: Attorney-at-law Jochen Bühling, Krieger Mes Rechtsanwälte Partnerschaft mbB, Bennigsen-Platz 1, 40474 Düsseldorf, Germany Electronic address for service: jochen.buehling@krieger-mes.de EUROPEAN PATENTS NO. EP 2 826 630 B1 and EP 3 530 469 B1 PANEL/DIVISION: Panel of the Local Division in Düsseldorf DECIDING JUDGES: This order was issued by Presiding Judge Thomas acting as judge-rapporteur, the legally qualified judge Dr Schumacher and the legally qualified judge Lopes. LANGUAGE OF THE PROCEEDINGS: English SUBJECT: R. 275.2 RoP – Order of good service SUMMARY OF THE FACTS: 1. By way of an application for provisional measures, the Applicant seeks a preliminary injunc- tion and further provisional measures against the Defendants in respect of an alleged in- fringement of EP 2 826 630 B1 and of EP 3 530 469 B1. 2. The application for provisional measures was filed on 28 May 2025. After the Applicant has submitted the translations requested by the Court, service on Defendant I was initiated via 2  the official online portal of the Central Authority of China on 4 June 2025. 3. According to the available online processing history, the documents to be delivered were forwarded within the Chinese authorities to the Supreme People’s Court for further pro- cessing, where they arrived on 5 June 2025. 4. No further processing by the Chinese authorities could then be detected on the online portal. 5. Therefore, the Applicant asked Defendant I to voluntarily accept service of the application for provisional measures. The Applicant set a deadline of 15 September 2025. This request was unsuccessful. 6. Against this background, on 18 September 2025, the Applicant requested the Düsseldorf Lo- cal Division to make an inquiry to the Central Authority of China regarding the status of ser- vice of the application for provisional measures. 7. The Court complied with this request by submitting a corresponding inquiry in Chinese via the online portal. 8. On 23 September 2025, the Düsseldorf Local Division received a certificate issued by the Chinese authorities stating “that the document has not been served, by reason of the following facts: No such company at the address provided.” 9. As the Applicant considers that the service has been failed, it requests an order that the steps already taken be considered as good service. INDICATION OF THE PARTIES’ REQUESTS: 10. The Applicant requests: 1. that the Court order that the steps already taken to bring the Application for Provisional Measures ACT_24346/2025 to the attention of Defendant I constitute good service pur- suant to Rule 275.2 RoP UPC. Service shall be deemed effective as of the date of this order; 2. the order according to item 1. be published on the Court’s website with the names of the parties and the file number, so that the order can be found under the decisions pub- lished on the website. GROUNDS FOR THE ORDER: 11. Pursuant to R. 275.2 RoP, on a reasoned request by the claimant, the Court may order that steps already taken to bring the statement of claim to the attention of the defendant by an alternative method or at an alternative place is good service. 12. According to its wording, R. 275.2 RoP concerns the service of the statement of claim and, therefore, the proceedings on the merits. However, given the urgent nature of the applica- tion for provisional measures, the option to consider the steps already taken as good service must apply all the more so for the Defendant’s information about the application for provi- sional measures and its invitation to lodge an objection (R. 209.1(a) RoP). 3 13. This said, the Düsseldorf Local Division has exhausted all available means of formal service which are provided by Rules 270 to 274 RoP. 14. Service in accordance with the Hague Convention, initiated via the online service officially provided by the Central Authority of China on 4 June 2025, has definitely failed. Due to the urgent nature of applications for provisional measures, no further attempts at service are necessary. 15. The Düsseldorf Local Division has complied with all of the formal requirements set out in the Hague Convention. The Chinese authorities have not objected to the compliance with these requirements. Instead, they informed the Düsseldorf Local Division without further compre- hensible justification and only upon request, that “no such company [exists] at the address provided”. 16. However, the Applicant has credibly demonstrated that the address provided by the Appli- cant in its application, to which service was attempted, is accurate and corresponds to the company’s registered address. 17. According to the Applicant, the address provided on Amazon, the website that Defendant I uses to sell its products, is a phonetic translation of the name and address of Defendant I in Chinese to the Latin alphabet: 18. The Applicant has provided a clear explanation that this is merely a phonetic translation. The (exemplary) first line of the business address (“Geschäftsadresse”) was translated from Chi- nese to the Latin alphabet as follows: 19. As the actual meaning of the address information could not be determined based solely on its phonetic transliteration – and in order to ensure the utmost accuracy – the Applicant has explained that its representatives conducted an independent verification of the address through an internal International Company Overview Report (“ICO Report”, see Exhibit FBD 8). The business name (“Geschäftsname”) provided on the Amazon page for Defendant I led to the following information with regard to the company address: 4 20. The ICO Report, as can be seen at the end of the document under “Source”, is based on the information provided by the “Market and Quality Supervision Administration of Zhuhai City Xiangzhou District”. According to the Applicant, this is a local Chinese government agency in the Xiangzhou District of Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province. It is responsible for market su- pervision, quality control, and regulatory enforcement in Xiangzhou District, where Defend- ant I is based. The agency is, inter alia, responsible for market entity registration and there- fore maintains records of company registrations, including legal addresses. 21. In addition, the Applicant has comprehensibly referred to the website www.qcc.com. As the Applicant has explained, this website is a third party commercial corporate database which provides access to data on companies registered in China, including official registration de- tails. The following excerpt shows the address provided for Defendant I, first in the original Chinese and then translated to English: 22. According to the Applicant, it based the address details of the application for provisional measures on the verified address. Set out below is the address as provided in the Chinese translation in the same address structure and with the postal code at the end (as also shown in the address provided by the Chinese database, above mn. 12): 23. On this basis, the Applicant has sufficiently demonstrated that the provided address is cor- rect. However, the Chinese authorities did not serve the application for provisional measures to this address. Instead, three and a half months after they had received the documents for service via the website provided by the Chinese authorities for this purpose, they only re- sponded to an inquiry by stating without further explanation that the respondent did not exist at the provided address. 24. This justifies considering the steps taken so far as proper service in accordance with R. 275.2 RoP (with regard to the refusal of service due to formal complaints, see: UPC_CFI_330/2024 (LD Mannheim), Order of 31 July 2024 – Panasonic v Xiaomi). 5 25. Art. 15(2) of the Hague Convention does not preclude this. Insofar as this provision stipulates as one condition to be fulfilled that a period of time of not less than six months has elapsed since the date of the transmission of the document, this time limit cannot apply without restriction in PI proceedings. Applying this time limit formally puts the Applicant at risk of its legal protection potentially becoming ineffective. Art. 15(3) of the Hague Convention shows that the Convention also recognises this issue by allowing the order of provisional measures in urgent cases, despite the formal service requirements. 26. In the present case, all efforts to serve the application or otherwise bring it to Defendant’s I attention have failed. 27. In the context of the attempted formal service, the authorities have stated that Defendant I does not exist at the address provided by the Applicant, despite the Applicant providing suf- ficient evidence that the address is correct. It is also not apparent that the Applicant would have other means of determining Defendant’s I address. Furthermore, a renewed attempt at formal service would be incompatible with the Applicant’s application for provisional measures, given that the first attempt already took three and a half months. Additionally, the Applicant’s attempt to inform Defendant I of the application by email has remained un- answered. There are no other apparent alternative service options. Therefore, there is also no scope for an order under R. 275.1 RoP. 28. To ensure effective legal protection for the Applicant, it is therefore necessary to order that the steps already taken to bring the application for provisional measures to the attention of Defendant I is good service. 29. In order to enable Defendant I to take note of the present order without service, it was nec- essary to order that a separate reference to the present order be made on the Court’s pub- licly available website. ORDER: I. The steps already taken to bring the application for provisional measures in the pro- ceedings UPC_CFI_449/2025 to the attention of Defendant I constitute good service pursuant to R. 275.2 RoP. II. Service is deemed to be effective as of the date of this order. III. This order shall be published on the Court’s website with the names and the file num- ber, so that the order can be found under the orders and decisions published on the website. 6 Issued in Düsseldorf on 16 October 2025 NAMES AND SIGNATURES Ronny Digital unterschrieben Presiding Judge Thomas von Ronny Thomas Thomas Datum: 2025.10.15 15:56:14 +02'00' Digital unterschrieben Legally qualified judge Dr Schumacher Jule Kathrin von Jule Kathrin Schumacher Schumacher Datum: 2025.10.15 16:17:40 +02'00' Assinado de forma Rute Alexandra digital por Rute Legally qualified judge Lopes Da Silva Sabino Alexandra Da Silva Sabino Lopes Lopes Dados: 2025.10.15 20:50:46 +01'00' 7

Key Holdings

• Service deemed effective under R. 275.2 RoP despite failure by Chinese Central Authority.
• Court confirmed address correctness against Chinese authority statement.
• Alternative service rule applied to PI application.

Tags

• China
• Preliminary Injunction
• Service

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