A number of orders have recently issued regarding aspects of confidentiality considered for the first time at the UPC. In Insulet v EOFLOW (UPC_CFI_477/2025), the Milan Central Division had to rule on the confidentiality of Insulet's legal costs. Whilst the Court found the legal costs to be confidential in this case, the rationale makes it clear that confidentiality will not always apply to such costs. Meanwhile, in DDP v Greenchemicals (UPC_CFI_203/2025), the Düsseldorf Local Division rejected Greenchemical's plea to drop the imposed penalty for culpable breaches of a confidentiality order. These cases are discussed in more detail below.
Insulet v EOFLOW (UPC_CFI_477/2025)
On 5 June 2025, the Milan Central Division issued a procedural order in the dispute between Insulet Corporation and EOFLOW Co., Ltd. The order addressed a request by Insulet to maintain confidentiality over certain legal costs and fee details related to its application for a preliminary injunction involving EP4201327.
Insulet argued that: (i) the information was protected under client-attorney privilege; the information was highly sensitive (for example hourly rates of the legal representatives); the information was not available to the public; and Insulet had a legitimate interest in maintaining the information's confidentiality. EOFLOW disagreed, responding that the information was if anything a trade secret of Insulet's legal representatives rather than Insulet's; some of the information was not confidential; and EOFLOW's interest in accessing the information overrides Insulet's confidentiality interests.
The court considered that the protection governed by Rule 262A ROP did not extend to client-attorney privilege or to protecting legal representatives' interests regarding their confidential information. Rather, only from the point of view of the party might confidentiality as a general principle be granted to costs incurred relating to patent litigation, and only to the extent that the information indicates the importance that parties attach to the patents they hold and the risk they are willing to take to protect them.
Accordingly, the Milan Central Division ruled that, in principle, a party's costs are not covered by confidentiality unless they are specifically indicative of the party's financial capacity, its commercial strategy, or the importance of the patent as a corporate asset. In this case, the court decided that the invoices issued by Insulet's legal representatives could be protected by confidentiality because they demonstrated Insulet's interest in defending their patent.
A further point of contention in this case concerned who should be entitled to access the confidential documents. Insulet proposed that such access be limited only to EOFLOW's legal advisers. However, the court held that the confidentiality club must include at least one natural person from each party. Accordingly, the court designated EOFLOW's CEO, Jesse Kim, to have access to the confidential information.
This order exemplifies the court's balancing act between protecting confidential business information and allowing sufficient access to evidence. The ruling is likely to be instructive in future UPC proceedings, particularly in cases where the disclosure of litigation cost details could reveal underlying commercial strategies.
DDP v Greenchemicals (UPC_CFI_203/2025)
In this order, issued by the Düsseldorf Local Division on 16 May 2025, the court ruled that certain financial information contained in one of DDP's submissions and in an exhibit filed at the court was classified as confidential. Access to the information was therefore limited to Greenchemicals' legal team and one of its employees.
The court ordered that it may impose a penalty payment on Greenchemicals for each culpable breach of this order, which would be determined based on the circumstances of each breach. This order was made despite Greenchemicals arguing that the imposed penalty should be dropped. It seems from the order that Greenchemicals had argued that the confidential information was actually publicly available. However, the court decided that Greenchemicals had not sufficiently demonstrated this point.
The court further specified that Greenchemicals' team now has the choice to provide access to the information to additional team members. However, in the event of a breach of the duty of confidentiality by any member of their team to whom they have granted access, Greenchemicals' team would be liable.
Beyond the limitations on access, the order ruled that the duty of confidentiality will persist even after the conclusion of the proceedings.
A third order: Hurom Co., Ltd. v. NUC Electronics Co., Ltd (UPC_CoA_434/2025)
In this order from the UPC's Court of Appeal, the defendant sought to avoid complying with a first instance ruling to provide the patentee with detailed (and potentially confidential) information regarding the extent to which it had committed infringing acts. They did this by applying for suspensive effect pending the appeal decision. Look out for our latest news item on suspensive effect at the UPC which discusses this alternative approach to attempting to maintain confidentiality of information, which will be published in the next few days.
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