Appeal n°:

APL_12280/2025

APL_12281/2025

APL_12282/2025

UPC_CoA_221/2025

UPC_CoA_222/2025

UPC_CoA_223/2025

Cross-appeal n°:

APL_18551/2025

APL_18559/2025

APL_18550/2025

UPC_CoA_356/2025

UPC_CoA_357/2025

UPC_CoA_355/2025

ORDER

of the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court issued on 03 July 2025

HEADNOTES

The number of US attorneys authorized to access confidential information shall not be greater than necessary in order to ensure compliance with the right of both Appellant and Respondents to an effective remedy and to a fair trial. The request of NST to let its US attorneys access the confidential information in order to ensure a proper coordination of the UPC proceedings and a review of the infringement analysis and arguments shall be balanced against the legitimate expectation of Qualcomm to ensure adequate protection of the confidential information. NST has not demonstrated that it is necessary to grant access to the confidential information to more than one trusted US attorney of NST to serve as a link between NST and the UPC representatives.

KEYWORDS

Protection of confidential information (R. 262A RoP); number of persons to whom access to confidential is granted (R. 262A.5 RoP)

APPELLANT IN APPEALS 12280/2025, 12281/2025 AND 12282/2025 AND RESPONDENT IN CROSS-APPEALS 18551/2025, APL_18559/2025 AND APL_18550/2025 (APPLICANT IN THE R. 333 ROP APPLICATION AND CLAIMANT IN THE PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE)

Network Systems Technologies LLC, 533 Congress Street, Portland, ME 04101, USA (hereinafter ' NST ')

represented by Dr. Thomas Gniadek, attorney-at-law, and other representatives of Simmons & Simmons LLP

RESPONDENTS IN APPEALS 12280/2025, 12281/2025 AND 12282/2025 AND APPELLANTS IN CROSS-APPEALS 18551/2025,

APL_18559/2025 AND APL_18550/2025 (DEFENDANTS IN THE PROCEEDINGS BEFORE THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE)

Qualcomm Incorporated , 5775 Morehouse Drive, San Diego, CA 92121, USA Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. , 5775 Morehouse Drive San Diego, CA 92121, USA Qualcomm Germany GmbH , Anzinger Straße 13, 81671 Münich, Germany

(hereinafter together ' Qualcomm ')

represented by Johannes Heselberger, attorney-at-law, and other representatives of Bardehle Pagenberg PartG mbB Patentanwälte Rechtsanwälte

PATENTS AT ISSUE

EP 1 552 669 in Infringement action ACT_8062/2024 UPC_CFI_63/2024

EP 1 875 683 in Infringement action ACT_8063/2024 UPC_CFI_64/2024

EP 1 552 399 in Infringement action ACT_8064/2024 UPC_CFI_65/2024

DECIDING JUDGES

Panel 1a

Klaus Grabinski, Presiding judge

Peter Blok, legally qualified judge

Emmanuel Gougé, legally qualified judge and judge-rapporteur

LANGUAGE OF THE PROCEEDINGS

English

IMPUGNED ORDER OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

□ Order of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court, Munich Local Division, dated 26 February 2025 (Appeal APL_12280/2025 UPC_CoA_221/2025 and Cross-appeal APL_18551/2025 UPC_CoA_356/2025)

Numbers attributed by the Court of First Instance:

UPC_CFI_63/2024 ACT_8062/2024 App_67344/2024 ORD_68762/2024

□ Order of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court, Munich Local Division, dated 26 February 2025 (Appeal APL_12281/2025 UPC_CoA_222/2025 and Cross-appeal APL_18559/2025 UPC_CoA_357/2025)

Numbers attributed by the Court of First Instance:

UPC_CFI_64/2024 ACT_8063/2024 App_67345/2024 ORD_68761/2024

□ Order of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court, Munich Local Division, dated 26 February 2025 (Appeal APL_12282/2025 UPC_CoA_223/2025 and Cross-appeal APL_18550/2025 UPC_CoA_355/2025)

Numbers attributed by the Court of First Instance:

UPC_CFI_65/2024 ACT_8064/2024 App_67346/2024 ORD_68760/2024

ORAL HEARING

18 June 2025

FACTS AND REQUESTS OF THE PARTIES

NST filed three patent infringement actions against Qualcomm before the Munich Local Division (hereafter 'Munich LD') . On 30 July 2024, Qualcomm filed an application for protection of confidential information under R. 262A RoP with regard to specified technical and economic information to which NST requested access in all three infringement actions. On 7 December 2024, the judge-rapporteur classified part of the information as confidential information (hereafter 'the confidential information') , allowed access to said information to (i) NST's UPC representative, (ii) two NST 's employees and (iii) one technical expert named by NST, and rejected NST's request to also allow four US attorneys-at-law of NST to get access to the confidential information (Order ORD_51430/2024, ORD_51432/2024 and ORD_51434/20, hereafter jointly the 'JR Order' ). Upon request for a review under R. 233 RoP, the Munich LD decided in an order of 26 February 2025 (ORD_68760/2024, ORD_68761/2024 and ORD_68762/2024, hereafter jointly the ' impugned order ) to ' amend the JR Order to the effect that one of the four US attorneys-at-law, Daniel S. Stringfield, is also allowed access to the confidential information, although not the other three US attorneys-at-law of NST, and granted leave to appeal the order. The Munich LD considered inter alia that R. 262A.6 RoP does not require that the person to whom access is given be an employee of a party or a representative within the meaning of Art. 48 UPCA, that the fact that US attorneys are neither employees of the party, nor its representatives within the meaning of Art. 48 UPCA, does not preclude from the outset that they have unrestricted access to confidential information under R. 262A RoP and that it is sufficient to grant access to one further US attorney. NST filed appeals against the impugned order and requests to also grant Peter Krusiewicz, one of the other US attorneys-at-law of NST, access to the confidential information bound by the confidentiality obligations set up in the JR Order and, in the alternative, to refer the case back to the Court of First Instance (hereafter the ' CFI ') . Qualcomm responded to the appeals, requesting that the Court of Appeal dismiss the appeals and filed crossappeals by which it requests the impugned order to be set aside to the extent that Mr. Stringfield is granted access to the confidential information (Statement of response and Statement of cross-appeal of 16 April 2025). NST replied to the Statement of cross-appeal and requests the cross-appeals be rejected (Reply to the crossappeal of 2 May 2025). NST's grounds of appeal and reply to the Statement of cross-appeal can be summarized as follows:

-NST has the right to choose its legal team regardless of its location, as long as only one single team member is a UPC Representative, and NST has chosen the US attorneys as their lead counsel because there is a trustful relationship between them and NST.

-The UPC representatives lack the required technical knowledge while the technical knowledge of Mr. Stringfield and Mr. Krusiewicz who have been involved in this lawsuit from the beginning, is essential to be able to respond to Qualcomm s submissions in the UPC litigation. '

-Mr. Krusiewicz, who is a reliable and trustworthy person, possesses as a trained engineer in-depth knowledge of the technical and legal aspects relevant to the proceedings and can provide valuable insights into the understanding of the invention.

Qualcomm's Statement of response and Statement of cross-appeal can be summarized as follows:

-NST does not show the relevance of the specific confidential information to the performance of the US attorney's role in the UPC proceedings and, instead, only makes general statements pertaining to a very trustful relationship with the US attorneys.

-NST's technical expert has already been granted access to the confidential information and NST has not shown in detail why the confidential information is relevant for their US attorneys role in the present ' proceedings.

-The involvement of NST's US attorneys in parallel US proceedings should be seen as an argument against granting access to the confidential information to NST's US attorneys , as a result of an increased risk that they use such information in said parallel proceedings and because any stipulation requiring them to treat the information as strictly confidential is not enforceable in the United States.

GROUNDS

The appeals and the cross-appeals are admissible but shall be rejected for the following reasons. It is undisputed between the parties that the confidential information as classified in the JR Order is to be kept confidential pursuant to R. 262A.5 RoP. The parties disagree as to whether NST's US attorneys, in addition to the persons already authorized in the JR Order, shall be allowed to have access to the confidential information as well as to the number and identity of NST's US attorneys. The CFI has a margin of discretion when deciding on whether a particular person is granted access to information qualified to be confidential under R. 262A.1 and 5 RoP and it is only up to the Court of Appeal to set aside a respective order of the CFI and decide anew if the CFI has disregarded legal principles in the exercise of its discretion or has exceeded its discretionary powers. According to R. 262A.6 RoP, the number of persons to whom access is restricted shall be no greater than necessary in order to ensure compliance with the right of the parties to the legal proceedings to an effective remedy and to a fair trial, and shall include, at least, one natural person from each party and the respective lawyers or other representatives of those parties to the legal proceedings. Whether a particular person may be granted full access under R. 262A.6 RoP must be determined on the basis of the relevant circumstances of the case, including the role of that person in the proceedings before this Court, the relevance of the confidential information to the performance of that role and the trustworthiness of the person in keeping the information confidential (CoA, Order of 12 February 2025, Daedalus v Xiaomi, APL_58177/2024 UPC_CoA_621/2024, para. 12). As a general principle, a party is free to decide which attorneys it wishes to engage to assist it in the proceedings (above cited CoA Order of 12 February 2025, Daedalus v Xiaomi, para. 16). It follows that a party may decide to engage its trusted advisor to assist the team of UPC representatives. As rightly pointed out by the Court of First instance (impugned order, para. 35), and raised by NST in its Statement of appeal and reply to the cross-appeal, Mr. Stringfield and Mr. Krusiewicz, acting as an outsourced legal department of NST, have been involved in the lawsuit between NST and Qualcomm since the beginning, have been chosen by NST as its lead counsels, who act as a link between NST and its representatives in the UPC proceedings, after they had been involved in identifying the alleged infringing Qualcomm chips. In order to ensure the right of NST to a fair trial, it is thus necessary that one of NST's US attorneys has access to all information available, including the confidential information , and NST's right to an effective remedy outweighs the interest of Qualcomm in restricting the access to the confidential information. It remains however that the number of NST's US attorneys authorized to access the confidential information shall not be greater than necessary in order to ensure compliance with the right of both NST and Qualcomm to an effective remedy and to a fair trial. The request of NST to let its US attorneys access the confidential information in order to ensure a proper coordination of the UPC proceedings and a review of the infringement analysis and arguments shall be balanced against the legitimate expectation of Qualcomm to ensure adequate protection of the confidential information. NST has not demonstrated that it is necessary to grant access to the confidential information to more than one trusted US attorney of NST to serve as a link between NST and the UPC representatives as authorized by the Munich LD in the impugned Order. Given the confidential nature of the information and the need to limit access to it, and considering that NST requested in its submissions of 7 October 2024 that the US attorneys should be granted access in the order of priority set out in there, the discretionary decision of the Munich LD that Mr. Stringfield shall be the only US attorney to be granted access to the confidential information under the conditions set out in the Order of 7 December 2024 is found not flawed. The fact that the US attorney is involved in parallel proceedings in the USA does not imply that the confidential information be cross-used in said parallel litigation as access to the confidential information is granted only under the strict conditions set out in the Munich LD Order of 7 December 2024, according to which the persons who get access are obliged to treat the information as strictly confidential during and after

('beyond') this litigation, to use it exclusively for the purposes of this litigation and not to share it with any other person or party.

The argument made by NST concerning the technical qualification as trained engineer and technical knowledge of Mr. Krusiewicz, which was submitted for the first time in the appeal proceedings without giving any reasons why this fact should not be disregarded under R. 222.2 RoP, does not change this. The UPC representatives of NST, in addition to the assistance of two employees of NST who have been granted access to the confidential information, already benefit from the assistance of a technical expert selected by NST, who has been granted access to the confidential information. As the appointed technical expert can address the technical understanding and analysis of the case and adequately assist NST's representatives for the purpose of the UPC proceedings, there is no need to also grant Mr. Krusiewicz with regard to his technical qualifications as an engineer access to the confidential information in the case-at-hand.

ORDER

The appeals and the cross-appeals are rejected.

This order was issued on 03 July 2025.

Klaus Grabinski, Presiding judge

Peter Blok, legally qualified judge

Emmanuel Gougé, legally qualified judge and judge-rapporteur