As of 31 December 2025, the UPC’s Court of First Instance had received a total of 494 patent infringement actions, 415 counterclaims for invalidity, 88 standalone invalidity actions, and 91 applications for interim measures, alongside 43 applications for the preservation of evidence, inspection and asset freezing. Klas Grabinski, President of the UPC Court of Appeal, stated in the report that the increase in case numbers reflects the market’s growing confidence in the UPC, and that a uniform and predictable case law system will form an important foundation for innovation and patent enforcement in Europe.

This case centres on Indian Patent IN184753, entitled “Decoding apparatus for converting modulated signals into a sequence of M-bit information words”. Philips argued that this patent corresponds to US Patent US5696505 and European Patent EP745254B1, both of which have been recognised as essential patents within the DVD technical standard; consequently, the corresponding Indian patent should also be regarded as an SEP.

The case began two years ago. SnapRays alleged that its electrical socket covers incorporated additional features such as LED lights and USB chargers, and were granted patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office between 2018 and 2019 (patent numbers: 10,109,945; 10,373,773; 10,381,788; 10,381,789; 10,404,045). However, shortly after the products were launched, they faced market competition from products such as LumiCover and GloCover, manufactured by American Tack & Hardware, which were alleged to infringe these patents.

Recently, the 21st Civil Division of the Munich Regional Court handed down a ruling in the patent infringement case brought by HP against Ninestar (Case No. 21 O 3846/25), prohibiting the Chinese company Ninestar and its four subsidiaries from selling specific printer cartridges in Germany, and finding the Chinese parent company jointly liable for infringement due to its ‘organisational control’ over the group’s operations.

On 12 May 2026, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales handed down its judgment in the Standard Essential Patent (SEP) FRAND licensing dispute between Nokia and Acer and ASUS, permanently staying the FRAND proceedings brought by Acer and ASUS in the UK; the trial originally scheduled for June to July 2026 has been cancelled.

This case centres on Ericsson’s European patent EP 2819131 B1, which relates to a design for an inductor coil with a symmetrical double-loop structure. The core of the invention lies in the arrangement of two loops of identical size and shape with opposing currents, causing the electromagnetic field components to cancel each other out at a certain distance, thereby reducing unnecessary electromagnetic coupling on the chip. Ericsson argued that the AX201 and AX211 modules used by ASUS in its products fell within the scope of protection of claim 1 of the patent in question, constituting direct infringement.

This case forms part of a series of patent disputes between Dyson and ZMI, concerning the patent EP3119235 (hand-held hair styling appliance). Previously, in response to an application for interim measures initiated by Dyson, the Hamburg Regional Court issued a preliminary injunction on 14 August 2025, finding that ZMI’s older product infringed the patent; this injunction became the first preliminary injunction issued by the UPC to cover Spain.

On 8 May 2026, the 10th Civil Chamber of the Court of Appeal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, issued a ruling in the dispute between Nokia and Asus concerning standard-essential patents for the AVC/H.264 standard: It dismissed Asus’s application to set aside the interim injunction, upheld the previous interim injunction against Asus, and ruled to exclude the relevant opinion in an expert report which concluded that the patent in question was not standard-essential and consequently denied that Asus had infringed the patent; it further ordered a new expert to be appointed to provide a supplementary report on this issue.

On 7 May 2026, the ITC issued a partial final ruling in the Section 337 case brought by Infineon against the Chinese gallium nitride semiconductor firm Innoscience, finding that Innoscience had infringed Infineon’s US Patent No. 9,899,481. Consequently, the ITC issued a limited exclusion order and a cease-and-desist order prohibiting the importation of Innoscience’s infringing products into the United States.

This litigation dates back to November 2025, when the RTL Group initiated revocation proceedings against Huawei’s other MPEG DASH patent EP2945339 (“Method and apparatus for regulating streaming data transmission”) at the UPC Central Court in Paris, and applied for access to the case files of the Nokia v. Amazon case to assess its own risks.