CA, Inc. v Deutsche Telekom AG and Telekom Deutschland GmbH, UPC Local Division Munich (second panel), 29 July 2026, Case nos. UPC_CFI_515/2026 and UPC_CFI_1797/2026
A review under R. 333 RoP of a confidentiality order, concerning the meaning of the “unredacted document” that must be lodged under R. 262A.3 RoP.
Telekom had filed, as an exhibit to its statement of defence, a single page of an internal document of more than one hundred pages, in a redacted version and in an unredacted version, and applied for confidentiality protection in respect of the redacted information, which concerned the functioning of the attacked embodiment. CA sought production of the entire document, or at least of its table of contents and the passages implicitly cross-referred to on that page, arguing that otherwise the requirement of an “unredacted document” would be left with no content and the reference point of R. 262A.3 RoP would be left to the choice of the applicant for protection. It also invoked equality of arms and argued that there can be no category of “confidential and viewable by nobody”.
The panel upheld the judge-rapporteur’s order. An “unredacted document” within the meaning of R. 262A.3 RoP is, having regard to the purpose of the provision, a document from which the information or evidence to be protected under R. 262A.1 RoP is apparent. An extract from a larger document can therefore be an “unredacted document”, and it need not be unredacted in a technical sense. R. 262A.3 RoP confers no right on the party to be made subject to restrictions to inspect the whole document from which the extract introduced into the proceedings was taken. What is required is that the information to be protected is disclosed to that party so that it can comment in an informed way, and for that purpose the whole document and the “complete documentary context” will as a rule not be needed.
CA had not shown why it needed the whole document in order to respond to the confidentiality request. The fact that the extract implicitly referred to other parts was not enough, since those parts were (so far) neither the subject of the proceedings nor of the confidentiality request. Nor did equality of arms assist. What matters is not who knows what, but which information has been introduced into the proceedings and made the basis of a party’s case, each party being responsible for its own submissions. The panel left open, as not being the subject of the review request, whether a party that pleads on the basis of an extract only may fall short of a (secondary) burden of pleading, and observed that CA’s subsequent request for production under R. 190 RoP appeared to be the more appropriate route. Leave to appeal was refused.
A copy of the Decision (in German) can be read here.
