UPC_CFI_604/2026 – Ecovacs v Roborock

Expert Commentary

Application to produce evidence Facts 1. The claimant lodged its Statement of Claim (alleging infringement) on 13 February 2026. 2. In the Statement of Claim, the claimant asked for the production of evidence (source code which regulated certain acts of the robot) and documents in case the defendant denied infringement. 3. In the Statement of Defence, the defendant denied infringement with a request for confidentiality and asked for dismissal of the request for ordering evidence. 4. The claimant asked for an extension of time because it would get the unredacted version of the Statement of Defence later due to the confidentiality request. The Court 1. The Court refused the request to remove the expert reports in the Statement of Claim from the proceeding because they are allegedly not impartial. 2. It gave a preliminary confidentiality order (the lawyers get access) and urged the parties to reach an agreement on a definite order. 3. The Court cited the conditions for a successful R. 190 RoP request: 1. There is a fact that is relevant to the substantiation of the claim and the fact requires proof/evidence by the requesting party. 2. The requesting party must have presented evidence “reasonably available” in support of its claims; 3. The evidence to which access is requested must be “specified” and lie in control of the other party; 4. The other party’s confidential information must be protected; 5. Any order to produce evidence must satisfy the requirements of proportionality, equity, and fairness. One of the elements to be taken into consideration when assessing “proportionality” is the stage of the proceedings when the request to produce evidence is introduced. 4. The conditions were not met in this case: R. 190 RoP is not for the investigation of continuous facts but for producing evidence of substantiated, relevant and contested facts. 5. The Claimant got an extension for the days it took to make the confidential version known to its representatives. The defendant did not get the same extension because there was no reason for it. Comment 1. The case shows that a R. 190 RoP request cannot be used as a fishing expedition and, although there is no precise timing for it, it can be too early, especially if you have not seen the defence yet. 2. It is reasonable to grant an extension of time for the period during which representatives did not have access to the confidential information. It is also logical that there is no reason why the other party should get the same extension. The period for its next written submission only starts after the extended period. So, there is no reason for a further extension for that party.

Full Decision Text

Düsseldorf Local Division UPC CFI 604/2026 UPC CFI 2108/2026 Preliminary Procedural Order and Procedural Order of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court issued on 3 July 2026 concerning EP 3 808 512 B1 **HEADNOTES:** 1. In the absence of any specific fact that is contested at the time of submitting the request, it is not in line with the outlined principles relevant for assessing a R. 190 RoP Request to conditionally ask for an overall documentation. R. 190 RoP is not for investigation of unknown facts but to produce evidence for substantiated, relevant and contested facts. 2. Although neither the Enforcement Directive nor the UPCA nor the RoP set out a timeframe for submitting a R. 190 RoP Request that would make it (in)admissible, and there is also no procedural framework indicating that such request can only be introduced once all parties' arguments have been finalised, it is clear that a R. 190 RoP Request could be dismissed if the Court deems it to be too early in the proceedings, based on the circumstances of the case. **KEYWORDS:** APPLICATION TO PRODUCE EVIDENCE (R. 190 ROP) CONFIDENTIALITY REQUEST (R. 262A ROP) EXTENSION OF TIME LIMITS (R. 9.3 ROP) CLAIMANT INFRINGEMENT ACTION / DEFENDANT COUNTERSLAIM FOR REVOCATION APPLICANT REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS RESPONDENT CONFIDENTIALITY REQUEST APPLICANT REQUEST FOR EXTENSION OF TIME LIMITS **CLAIMANT** Ecovacs Robotics Co., Ltd., No. 518 Songwei Road, Wusongjiang Industry Park, Guoxiang Street, Wuzhong District, Suzhou, 215168 Jiangsu, China, represented by its managing director Jian Hua Zhuang, ibid. 1. whom – according to his report – the question has been put as to whether the Robots of the types Roborock Saros 10 (“Saros 10”), Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra (“S8”), Roborock Qrevo CurvX (“CurvX”), Roborock QV 35A (‘QV 35A’) and Roborock Saros Z70 (‘Saros Z70’) implement the features of claims 1 to 17 of the Patent in suit. 2. The Statement of Claim (Infringement Action) contains the following requests of Claimant: “In the event that Defendant disputes the presence of the claimed features, and only insofar as such features are disputed, pursuant to Article 59 UPCA and Rule 190 RoP, read in conjunction with Article 53 UPCA, that the Court orders Defendant to: I. Production of limited source code or pseudo code extracts implementing the functions that: a. acquire environment information from the robot's sensors (including the LiDAR, camera, structured light, and other optical systems) and generate or update the internal environment map used for localization and navigation; b. compare acquired environment information with the stored environment map to produce a comparison result, including the algorithmic criteria, matching rate thresholds, and confidence parameters used to determine whether the comparison result meets the set comparison requirement; c. identify and determine passable boundaries around the robot's current position based on the environment information, including the criteria used to distinguish passable boundaries from obstacle boundaries (such as wall detection, door detection, wall continuity analysis, open-space identification, connectivity analysis, obstacle analysis, and dimensional parameters or thresholds); d. detect, monitor the state of, optimize, and/or select a target boundary from the identified passable boundaries and determine a second position according to the target boundary, including any algorithmic criteria, optimization, weighting, or prioritization parameters applied; e. link target boundary detection, monitoring, optimization, and/or selection to the localization process and/or route planning, including in response to state changes to the boundary (including the interface functions, data structures passed between functions or modules, and any priority or weighting parameters used); f. control the robot's movement from its current position to the second position during the localizing process, including the path planning algorithms, navigation path computation, and any interface functions linking boundary selection outputs to movement control; and 19. The Court reserves all further decisions on the requests set out in the ‘Application for Confidentiality (functionality and operation of attacked robots)‘ pursuant to R. 262A and 262.2 RoP. **II.C. Request to produce documents** 20. Defendant argues that Claimant’s request for the production of documents is legally flawed, disproportionate and constitutes an abuse of law, and (thus) fails to meet the strict requirements established under the UPCA and the RoP. In the eyes of Defendant, even assuming that intra-procedural conditions are admissible under the UPCA and the RoP, Claimant failed to identify which facts it seeks to prove, did not identify by which means of evidence and did not explain for what purpose, i.e. the necessity of such evidence. Since Defendant in its ‘Statement of Defense and Counterclaim for Revocation‘ has already provided substantiated defence arguments against Claimant’s infringement allegations, supported by specific and factual information on the method for localization used by the attacked embodiments as well as by evidence in form of a written statement corroborating these facts, according to Defendant there is no evidentiary gap that would or could justify an order under R. 190 RoP. 21. In addition to the general principles set out in Art. 41(3) and 42 UPCA, the legal framework relevant for assessing a R. 190 RoP Request is laid down in Art. 59 UPCA, Rule 172 and 190 RoP implementing Article 6 of the Enforcement Directive. 22. In assessing the R. 190 RoP Request and based on above legal framework, the following cumulative conditions need to be considered by the Court, further developed by case-law (cf. CoA 24 September 2024, UPC CoA 298,299,300/2024 (Oppo et al. v. Panasonic) (headnote 3); LD The Hague Order of 14 October 2024 (Winnow v Orbisk), § 8; LD Munich (Panel 2), Order of 2 April 2025 (Promosome v. BioNTech SE et al.)): 1. There is a fact that is relevant to the substantiation of the claim and the fact requires proof/evidence by the requesting party. 2. The requesting party must have presented evidence “reasonably available” in support of its claims; 3. The evidence to which access is requested must be “specified” and lie in control of the other party; 4. The other party’s confidential information must be protected; 5. Any order to produce evidence must satisfy the requirements of proportionality, equity, and fairness. One of the elements to be taken into consideration when assessing “proportionality” is the stage of the proceedings when the request to produce evidence is introduced. 23. These conditions are not met in the case at hand. 24. Claimant has not indicated what fact(s) it intends to prove by relying on the requested evidence. In the Statement of Claim, Claimant demonstrates the infringement of the claim by concluding from the robot's behaviour to the implementation of the patented method. In the absence of any specific fact that is contested at the time of submitting the request, it is not in line with the outlined principles to conditionally ask for an overall documentation of parts of the source code. R. 190 RoP is not for investigation of unknown facts but to produce evidence for substantiated, relevant and contested facts. 25. Although neither the Enforcement Directive nor the UPCA nor the RoP set out a timeframe for submitting a R. 190 RoP Request that would make it (in)admissible, and there is also no procedural framework indicating that such request can only be introduced once all parties' arguments have been finalised, it is clear that a R. 190 RoP Request could be dismissed if the Court deems it to be too early in the proceedings, based on the circumstances of the case. That is also the case here. 26. In the Court’s view and based on the current circumstances of the case, Claimant’s request for the production of evidence needs to be refused, since Defendant in its ‘Statement of Defense and Counterclaim for Revocation‘ indeed has now provided substantiated defence arguments against Claimant’s infringement allegations, with reference to exhibits containing information on the method for localization used by the attacked embodiments, to what method the R. 190 RoP-request of Claimant refers. For this reason and at this moment it is therefore unclear whether and to what extent Claimant would (and could) dispute these defence arguments and which facts (and with what evidence) still need to be proven. **II.D. Extension of time limits** 27. As it took some time to give Claimant’s legal representatives access to the unredacted version of Defendant‘s written pleading, the Court sees reason to grant the request of Claimant for an extension of the time limit for filing the Reply to the Statement of Defence as well as the Defence to the Counterclaim (R. 29(a) RoP) including an Application to amend the patent (R. 30.1 RoP) until 2 September 2026, for the number of days between the service of the redacted version of the ‘Statement of Defense and Counterclaim for Revocation‘ and this order, as Claimant requested in the alternative. The Court will not grant a further extension now, since most (namely: the unredacted parts and all the other exhibits than VB02 and VB03) of Defendant‘s written pleading is available to Claimant, in respect of which it is yet possible for Claimant to engage a meaningful review of Defendant‘s position. 28. Defendant does not object to Claimant’s request in the interest of orderly conduct of the proceedings, provided that Defendant is granted a corresponding extension for filing its Rejoinder to the Reply in the infringement proceedings and its Reply to the Defence to the Counterclaim as well as potentially their Defence to the Application to Amend. In line with Claimant’s representatives the opportunity to respond to Defendant’s R. 262A-Application by 10 July 2026. - Reserves all further decisions on the requests set out in the ‘Application for Confidentiality (functionality and operation of attacked robots)‘ pursuant to R. 262A and 262.2 RoP. **III.C. Request to produce documents** - Dismisses the R. 190 RoP-requests of Claimant. **III.D. Extension of time limits** - Extends the time periods for filing the Reply to the Statement of Defence as well as the Defence to the Counterclaim (R. 29(a) RoP) including an Application to amend the patent (R. 30.1 RoP) by ten (10) days, so that the date for filing is set on 2 September 2026. - Orders that Defendants, in line with R. 29(d) RoP, have to lodge a Reply to the Defence to the Counterclaim together with a Rejoinder to the Reply to the Statement of Defence and any Defence to an Application to amend the Patent in suit within two months of service of the Defence to the Counterclaim. Issued in Düsseldorf on 3 July 2026 Presiding Judge: Bérénice Thom Legally Qualified Judge Ingo Rinken Legally Qualified Judge / Judge-Rapporteur Marije Knijff Information on Appeal An appeal may be lodged in accordance with Art. 73(2)(a) UPCA and R. 220.1(c) RoP.

Key Holdings

• A request for production of evidence under Rule 190 RoP cannot be used as a 'fishing expedition' for continuous facts, but rather for substantiated, relevant, and contested facts.
• The timing of a Rule 190 RoP request is crucial; it can be too early, especially before reviewing the Statement of Defence.
• Conditions for a successful Rule 190 RoP request include relevance, reasonable availability of own evidence, specified evidence in the other party's control, protection of confidential information, and proportionality.
• Extensions of time are granted for periods where representatives lack access to confidential information, but not automatically to the opposing party if their submission period has not yet begun.
• Preliminary confidentiality orders can be issued, with parties urged to agree on a definite order.

Tags

• Evidence
• Production of Evidence
• Confidentiality
• Procedural Order
• Proportionality
• Timing
• Rules of Procedure

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