The English Patents Court has allowed the claimants’ application to amend the confidentiality arrangements governing their RAND licensing proceedings against Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia). The effect of the amendment is to permit the use of documentation from the court proceedings in an anticipated ICC arbitration.
In June 2026, the Court of Appeal ordered a case-management stay requiring the parties to arbitrate. As a result, the RAND trial listed in the Patents Court was stayed. Nokia indicated it intended to submit a request for arbitration (“<span class="news-text_medium">RfA</span>”) shortly. The claimants consequently sought a temporary lifting of the stay, limited to an application to vary the confidentiality regime in order for their legal representatives to access material needed for the arbitration.
Nokia resisted the application. It submitted any arrangements concerning access to confidential documentation should instead be dealt with by the arbitral tribunal once it had been constituted. Nokia also contended varying the court order would require notice to affected third parties; and the exercise might have to be repeated after the tribunal made its own protective and document-production orders.
The claimants emphasised the prejudice which would follow if the requested variation was refused. Their lawyers would be unnecessarily constrained in preparing the Answer to the RfA, while the tribunal could be deprived of relevant information. The position was particularly acute for the third and fourth claimants, who had retained new counsel for the arbitration: unlike the lawyers acting for the other parties, their new counsel could not review key documents.
The claimants further noted Nokia had designated most of the confidential documents. The existing confidentiality regime, therefore, had a disproportionate practical effect on the claimants’ legal representatives.
Mellor J rejected Nokia’s objections and accepted the claimants’ analysis of the resulting prejudice. The judge also noted that Nokia had not drawn attention to the ICC Arbitration Rules’ procedural sequence: the tribunal is constituted only after both the RfA and the Answer have been filed. Counsel for the third and fourth claimants would therefore have been required to respond to the RfA without access to significant pleading materials.
The judge also declined Nokia’s proposed amendments which would have prevented disclosure of the court materials to the tribunal. Such a restriction, he observed, would create an anomalous position in which confidential material could be used for the purposes of the arbitration, but not within the arbitration itself.
Mellor J further observed the Court of Appeal would have expected the parties to cooperate in commencing the arbitration promptly, rather than becoming embroiled in this type of satellite dispute.
The decision takes a pragmatic and sensible approach to the relationship between court proceedings and arbitration in this long-running dispute. It recognises the need to preserve the effectiveness of the forthcoming ICC process, while addressing confidentiality concerns through a workable amendment to the existing court regime.
<span class="news-text_medium">Case:</span> <span class="news-text_italic-underline">Acer Inc v Nokia Technologies Oy [2026] EWHC 1939 (Pat)</span>, 28 July 2026 (Mellor J).
