Changes at Regional Court Mannheim as judge Dirk Böttcher moves to UPC full time

Thomas Schmidt has taken over as presiding judge of Civil Chamber 14 at Mannheim Regional Court. It is responsible for patent proceedings together with the 2nd Civil Chamber. The change had become necessary after the previous presiding judge Dirk Böttcher moved completely to the Unified Patent Court on 1 February.

220% UPC capacity in Mannheim

Böttcher had only taken over as presiding judge of the 14th Civil Chamber at the beginning of 2024. He was then appointed to the UPC in May of the same year. Previously, Böttcher had divided his workload equally between the UPC and Mannheim Regional Court. In future, he will only decide cases at the UPC.

Peter Tochtermann, who also previously served as judge at Mannheim Regional Court, already works at the Mannheim local division full time. In addition, Tochtermann is a member of the UPC presidium. The third judge at the local division is Holger Kircher. He also heads the 2nd Civil Chamber at Mannheim Regional Court with 80% of his working time.

The Mannheim local division will continue to have only one chamber with Tochtermann as presiding judge. The division will meet in two compositions under Tochtermann’s lead. In composition one, Tochtermann will sit with Kircher and in composition two with Böttcher. In future, the composition of Tochtermann, Böttcher and a foreign UPC judge will likely hear the most cases.

With 7.8% of all cases, the Mannheim local divison is currently the fifth busiest division at the UPC. According to the latest case report, Mannheim has 34 infringement cases, 38 counterclaims for revocation and one PI case. For a long time the largest campaign at the division included six lawsuits brought by Panasonic against Oppo and Xiaomi concerning SEPs. The parties settled their dispute at the end of 2024.

FujiFilm also filed a major lawsuit here against Kodak over offset printing technology. The dispute is also pending at the local division Düsseldorf. Furthermore, ZTE filed two lawsuits in Mannheim on New Year’s Eve against Samsung Electronics over mobile communication patents.

More changes ahead

According to the current business distribution plan, patent proceedings at Mannheim Regional Court will be divided equally between the two chambers. The first six patent cases will be assigned to the 2nd Civil Chamber under presiding judge Kircher, the next six cases to the 14th Civil Chamber under presiding judge Schmidt.

Schmidt is no stranger to patent law. He spent a significant amount of time as acting head of Peter Tochtermann’s patent chamber after the latter moved to the UPC in 2023. Most recently, he was deputy presiding judge of the 14th Civil Chamber.

There will be another round of staff changes at the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe at the end of February. The court is responsible for appeals in patent cases from the Regional Court Mannheim. Presiding judge Voss will retire by the end of the month. According to JUVE Patent information, a successor has not yet been appointed.

All images of judges: ©Unified Patent Court