Unsigned Appeal Rejected as Inadmissible

Windhager v. bellissa HAAS

UPC-CoA-894/2025, decision of 21 August 2026

bellissa HAAS GmbH sued Windhager Handelsgesellschaft m.b.H. and two others before the Mannheim Local Division for infringement of European patent EP2223589. Windhager counterclaimed for revocation. On 12 September 2025 the Local Division largely upheld¹  the infringement action and dismissed the counterclaim.

Windhager appealed with respect to both the infringement and counterclaim with a written pleading dated 24 October 2025, lodged in the Case Management System but not electronically signed. An application for suspensive effect lodged on 28 October 2025 was similarly unsigned. The Registry invited correction of formal deficiencies under Rule 225(c) RoP and payment of the appeal fee on 29 October 2025. Windhager lodged a rectified Statement of appeal with proof of payment on 12 November 2025 — again unsigned. Only after a further Registry invitation of 17 November 2025, asking for duly signed versions to be filed as a "Subsequent filing", did Windhager lodge a signed Statement of appeal, on 28 November 2025.

Bellissa objected that no valid appeal had been lodged within the two-month period under Article 73(1) UPCA and Rule 224.1(a) RoP, which (service having taken place on 12 September 2025) expired on 12 November 2025. Windhager was given the opportunity to respond by provisional order of 15 April 2026 and argued that the signature was a formal deficiency that was curable on the Court’s invitation.

By order of 30 April 2026 the judge-rapporteur pointed out that Windhager had not considered applying for re-establishment of rights. Windhager replied on 8 May 2026 that, given the procedural history, such an application was unnecessary.

The Court of Appeal decided to determine admissibility first and held an oral hearing on 16 July 2026, at which Windhager belatedly applied for re-establishment of rights and sought leave to file further written submissions. The appeal was rejected as inadmissible on 21 August 2026, with costs against Windhager.

An unsigned pleading is not validly lodged

The central holding is that Rule 4.1 RoP means what it says: every written pleading must be signed, and logging into the CMS with secure two-factor authentication, even though that amounts to a strong multi-factor authentication mechanism confirming the representative's identity, does not substitute for a signature. The Court traced the requirement's history, noting that it appeared only in the 18th draft of the Rules and was carried into the final version adopted by the Administrative Committee on 8 July 2022 precisely to secure the authenticity and integrity of the document lodged. Absent a signature, the pleading submitted via the CMS does not satisfy the requirements for valid lodging at all, and a document filed as a Statement of appeal which is not duly signed cannot be regarded or accepted as a Statement of appeal under Rule 224 RoP. This follows the Court's earlier ruling in SharkNinja v SEB² where the court held that a procedural document itself must bear an electronic signature to guarantee the authenticity of that procedural document and to exclude the risk that it is not in fact the work of the person authorized for that purpose.

Crucially, the absence of the signature is not a defect in a mere formal requirement that can be corrected as part of the formal examination procedure under Rule 229. Rule 229.2 provides for a period of 14 days for correcting deficiencies under Rules 225 (contents of the statement of appeal), 227 (language of the statement and grounds of appeal) and 228 (appeal fee).

The practical consequence is severe, because Rule 224.1 must be read with Rule 9.4 RoP: the two-month appeal period is non-extendable, so once it expires the appellant can no longer lodge an appeal, subject only to re-establishment of rights under Rule 320 RoP. Windhager's signed Statement of appeal arrived on 28 November 2025, sixteen days after the deadline.

The signature is not part of the Registry's formal examination

The Court was equally clear that the Registry's examination under Rule 229.1 RoP does not extend to signatures. Rule 229.1 requires the Registry to check compliance with Rules 224.1 (deadline for filing statement of appeal), 225, 227 and 228 as soon as practicable after lodging; other requirements, including Rule 4.1 (signature requirement), fall outside that exercise. Compliance with the signature requirement is the exclusive responsibility of the party's representative. The Registry may draw attention to an unsigned document if it happens to notice one, but that is a courtesy, not a procedural safeguard. It remains solely for the party or its representative to ensure that what is lodged complies with the Rules.

It followed that none of the Court's or Registry's conduct could be relied on as curing the defect or creating any legitimate expectation. The invitations to file signed versions, the continuation of the proceedings, the Court's allowing bellissa to file its Statement of response, the judge-rapporteur's order of 2 December 2025 refusing suspensive effect, and the order of 10 March 2026 summoning the parties to the oral hearing were all beside the point: by the time those steps were taken the non-extendable period had already expired, so no expectation of extension could arise in the first place, and neither order had addressed or decided admissibility.

The Court also gave short shrift to Windhager's reliance on technical difficulties in the CMS. Signing is done electronically outside the CMS, so such difficulties said nothing about whether the pleading was signed; and Windhager had offered no detailed explanation of why it could readily lodge unsigned pleadings on 24 October and 12 November 2025, and a signed one on 28 November 2025.

Re-establishment of rights: available in principle, but strictly time-barred

The Court confirmed that a missed Rule 224 deadline is not necessarily fatal, since Rule 320.1 RoP allows re-establishment where a party, despite all due care, failed to observe a time-limit for a cause outside its control and thereby lost a right or means of redress. But Rule 320.2 imposes its own limits:

the application must be lodged within one month of removal of the cause of non-observance, and in any event within six months of the missed time-limit.

Windhager had been expressly alerted to this route on 30 April 2026 and chose not to take it, filing no application within six months of 12 November 2025. The application finally made at the oral hearing on 16 July 2026 was out of time, so the Court did not need to consider whether the substantive conditions for re-establishment were met. The associated request for leave to file further written submissions was refused: Windhager had already had ample opportunity to be heard, through the order of 15 April 2026 inviting observations on admissibility and the order of 30 April 2026 flagging re-establishment.