UPC CoA, 12 February 2025: Confidentiality club membership: number of people and personal traits
12-03-2025 Print this page
Confidentiality club membership rules (R. 262A RoP); number of persons and personal traits.
Pursuant 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 rights 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 this provision 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.
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 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (hereinafter: UPCA). Such a requirement does not follow from the wording of the provision and would unduly restrict a party’s freedom to choose its assistants in the proceedings.
Therefore, the fact that the US attorneys are neither employees of Daedalus, nor representatives within the meaning of Art. 48 UPCA, does not preclude them from having full access to the confidential information under R. 262A RoP.
