Düsseldorf court loses presiding judge to UPC’s growth strategy

A spokeswoman for the Düsseldorf Regional Court confirmed to JUVE Patent that Sabine Klepsch, long-time presiding judge of Chamber 4c responsible for patent proceedings, is leaving the national court to work full-time at the UPC.

Since the new court’s launch, she has worked part-time at the Hamburg local division as presiding judge alongside legally qualified judge Stefan Schilling.

Sabine Klepsch

According to the Düsseldorf Regional Court, the move was initially to take place in early May, but there will likely be a slight delay. When asked by JUVE Patent, the UPC did not comment on specifics. However, a spokeswoman said that adjustments to the working hours of several UPC judges will be implemented in the coming weeks.

Only the beginning

With 7.9% of proceedings, the Hamburg local division currently ranks fifth in terms of the UPC’s total caseload. Ahead are the local divisions in Munich, Düsseldorf, Mannheim and the central division in Paris. According to the latest UPC statistics from early April, 65 of the 798 proceedings are now pending at the Hamburg local division. This includes 21 infringement proceedings, 24 counterclaims for revocation and ten applications for provisional measures.

Prominent disputes taking place in Hamburg include Reel vs Fives, Agfa vs Gucci and Daedalus vs Mediatek and Xiaomi. The first-instance court also heard the dispute between 10x Genomics and Vizgen.

The UPC is thus further expanding its capacity in terms of legally qualified judges. Earlier this year, the court published its budget for 2025, which clearly stated the number of judges at the UPC will grow significantly in the coming months. The court will achieve all additional judgeships both by hiring new judges and by increasing the working hours of existing part-time judges, such as Klepsch.

In February, Jule Schumacher became the third judge at the Düsseldorf local division and judges Tobias Pichlmaier and Dirk Böttcher moved from part-time to full-time roles.

Challenge for national courts

The expansion of capacities at the UPC poses a challenge for national courts to fill the resulting gaps in their own judicial benches. It is not yet known who will succeed Sabine Klepsch.

In view of the recent decline in case numbers, particularly at the Düsseldorf Regional Court, it is just as likely that the court’s presidium will choose to dissolve the chamber or discontinue its current IP focus. Since 2017, the number of new patent actions filed at the national court has fallen by just under 60% from 499 at that time to 201 new cases in 2024.

Düsseldorf is now the only German court to maintain three chambers for patent disputes. In early 2024, Mannheim Regional Court dissolved its well-known 7th Civil Chamber, following the decline in patent lawsuits in Mannheim and the launch of the Unified Patent Court.

Munich Regional Court also had three chambers dealing with patent disputes for a time. In mid-2021, the court created an additional chamber for IP, the 44th Civil Chamber. This was the court’s response to rising patent cases. In early 2023, however, the court’s business distribution plan stated the court would no longer assign new patent cases to the 44th Civil Chamber. This left only the 7th and 21st Civil Chambers for patent disputes.