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Year in Review9 min read

The UPC in 2025: Five Decisions That Reshaped European Patent Litigation

A retrospective on UPC decisions 2025 — the five rulings on inventive step, SEP injunctions, long-arm jurisdiction and FRAND that defined the year.

Our platform classified 741 UPC decisions and orders issued in 2025 — up from 451 the year before, and more than the Court's first two years combined. Most are procedural. But a handful of 2025 rulings did something rarer than resolve a dispute: they set the terms on which the next wave of disputes will be fought. This is our shortlist of the UPC decisions 2025 practitioners will still be citing in 2027 — five rulings (across six cases) on inventive step, standard-essential patents, cross-border reach and FRAND, with what each held and why it matters.

A word of calibration first. The UPC is two and a half years old, and "reshaped" is a strong verb we use advisedly: none of these is the last word, several are under appeal, and one straddles the year-end. What they share is that each closed a question the first two years left open — or sharpened a tool the Court had only gestured at before.

The year in numbers: scale, German gravity, telecom and pharma

By the end of May 2025 the UPC had recorded roughly 883 new cases before its Courts of First Instance, per the Court's own caseload update — climbing toward and through the 900 mark as the year ran on, plus a couple of hundred appeals at the Luxembourg Court of Appeal. That headline is the official "new cases" tally, not the same as raw action counts, which include counterclaims and procedural sub-applications.

Two structural features held all year. First, German gravity: the four German local divisions absorbed roughly three-quarters of all infringement actions, with Munich the single busiest forum. In our own corpus, Munich LD and the Court of Appeal are the two largest dockets by a wide margin, followed by Düsseldorf and Mannheim. Second, the two-sector tilt: telecommunications — driven by SEP disputes — and life sciences, including a notable run of medtech and pharma cases, dominated the substantive docket. Every one of the five decisions below sits in one of those two lanes.

Inventive step and insufficiency: the Court of Appeal writes its own rulebook

On 25 November 2025 the Court of Appeal handed down two decisions on the same day — Amgen v. Sanofi/Regeneron (UPC_CoA_528/2024) and Meril v. Edwards (UPC_CoA_464/2024) — that together function as the UPC's first comprehensive statement on how it assesses inventive step and sufficiency of disclosure.

On inventive step, the Court declined simply to import the EPO's familiar problem-solution approach. It adopted a more holistic test: start from a "realistic starting point" in the prior art, and ask whether the skilled person would — not merely could — have arrived at the claimed solution with a reasonable expectation of success, judged as of the priority date. On sufficiency, it held that the burden of showing the skilled person cannot reproduce the invention rests with the party attacking the patent, and that disclosure of one embodiment will generally do; not every conceivable variant within a functional claim needs to be enabled. In Amgen, the Court reversed the Munich Central Division's first-ever revocation and upheld the patent; in Meril, it maintained Edwards's heart-valve patent in amended form.

Why it matters: validity is the battleground in most UPC merits cases, and until November the standard was assembled from scattered first-instance orders. These two rulings give litigants on both sides a single, binding framework — and signal that the UPC intends to be its own court, not an EPO appeal board.

Philips v. Belkin: the first permanent SEP injunction holds up

2025 was the year the UPC's first permanent SEP injunction was confirmed on the merits. The Munich Local Division had found Philips's Qi wireless-charging patent (EP 2 867 997) valid and infringed by Belkin at first instance, and in October 2025 the Court of Appeal ruled on the merits, largely upholding — and in parts strengthening — the injunction. It reaches several UPC states. Notably, no FRAND defence was available to Belkin: the Court reasoned that Qi is only one of several ways to charge a device, so the patent did not confer the market power a FRAND defence presupposes.

Why it matters: it is the first time the UPC has carried a standard-essential patent all the way to a final, court-wide injunction on the merits — proof that the forum can deliver the cross-border SEP remedy that drew telecom litigants to it in the first place. The market-power reasoning also matters: a FRAND defence is not automatic simply because a patent is declared essential.

InterDigital v. Amazon: the "anti-interim-licence injunction" — but watch the date

This is the entry to handle with care, because its decisive moment sits right on the year-end. Through late 2025 the Mannheim Local Division issued what commentators have called an "anti-interim-licence injunction": an order restraining Amazon from pursuing interim-licence or anti-suit-style relief elsewhere that could stop InterDigital from litigating its SEPs at the UPC, backed by daily penalties. On 29 December 2025, the Court of Appeal refused Amazon's request for suspensive effect of that order — so the injunction stood into the new year. An English court responded with anti-anti-suit relief, and the UPC notified the European Commission of the orders.

Why it matters: it positions the UPC not just as a venue for SEP disputes but as a forum willing to defend its own jurisdiction against parallel proceedings — a meaningful escalation in the global SEP forum wars. We flag the timing honestly: the appellate ruling lands in the last days of December, so this is as much a 2026 story as a 2025 one.

Fujifilm v. Kodak and BSH/Electrolux: the long arm reaches the UK

The jurisdictional theme of the year began at the CJEU. In BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux (25 February 2025), the Court of Justice confirmed that an EU court may, in principle, hear infringement claims concerning the foreign parts of a European patent — including parts validated in non-EU states — where the defendant is domiciled in the forum. The UPC read this as licence to reach beyond its own member states.

In Fujifilm v. Kodak, the Düsseldorf Local Division accepted jurisdiction over the UK part of a European patent because the defendants were German-domiciled — "long-arm" jurisdiction in action. The nuance worth keeping straight: Kodak still won on the substance, as the patent was held invalid and the infringement claim dismissed. So the headline is jurisdictional reach, not a cross-border win.

Why it matters: post-Brexit, the UK had looked safely outside the UPC's grasp. Fujifilm v. Kodak — alongside companion cases reaching Spain — shows a single UPC action can now put non-UPC parts of a patent in play, changing the calculus for where (and whether) to litigate.

Sun Patent Trust v. Vivo: can the UPC set a FRAND rate?

The year's biggest open question came courtesy of Sun Patent Trust v. Vivo. Unusually, the SEP holder — not the implementer — asked the Paris Local Division to determine FRAND licence terms alongside its infringement claim, and the division held it had competence to hear that request. Vivo sought to stay the main proceedings until the Court of Appeal resolves whether the UPC can set FRAND rates at all; in late 2025 the Court of Appeal refused the stay, letting the case run while the jurisdictional appeal proceeds separately.

Why it matters: if the UPC can fix a global or pan-European FRAND rate, it becomes a direct rival to the English and Chinese courts that have claimed that role. The Court has not yet answered the question — but by refusing to pause the case, it kept the door open. This is the 2026 cliffhanger.

The five at a glance

DecisionCourt / divisionWhat it settled
Amgen v. Sanofi & Meril v. Edwards (25 Nov 2025)Court of AppealBinding framework for inventive step (holistic, "would not could") and for sufficiency of disclosure
Philips v. Belkin (CoA merits, Oct 2025)Munich LD → Court of AppealFirst permanent SEP injunction upheld on the merits; FRAND defence needs real market power
InterDigital v. Amazon (CoA order, 29 Dec 2025)Mannheim LD → Court of Appeal"Anti-interim-licence injunction" stands; suspensive effect refused — UPC defends its jurisdiction
Fujifilm v. Kodak + BSH/Electrolux (CJEU, 25 Feb 2025)Düsseldorf LD / CJEULong-arm jurisdiction over the UK (non-UPC) part of a European patent
Sun Patent Trust v. Vivo (CoA, late 2025)Paris LD → Court of AppealStay refused; leaves open whether the UPC can set FRAND rates

What to watch in 2026

Three threads run straight out of 2025 and into the new year:

  • Long-arm jurisdiction goes to Luxembourg. The reach the UPC asserted in Fujifilm v. Kodak is heading to the CJEU on referral. How far the long arm extends — and how foreign courts react — is set to be the dominant jurisdictional story of 2026.
  • The FRAND-rate question gets answered. The Sun Patent Trust v. Vivo appeal should tell us whether the UPC will set FRAND terms itself, with knock-on effects for the global venue contest.
  • PMAC opens its doors. The Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre is slated to begin operating in 2026, offering an alternative track for exactly the SEP and FRAND disputes the litigation docket is now full of. (Note, too, that court fees rose on 1 January 2026 — a separate nudge toward early settlement.)

If 2024 was the year the UPC proved it could function, 2025 was the year it started setting doctrine. Which of these five "reshaped" the field, and which merely nudged it, is a judgement only 2026 and 2027 will settle.

Want the full-year dataset behind these decisions — outcome base rates, division cuts and the SEP and pharma case flow? Explore the platform, or read our State of the UPC: 2025 Annual Report.

Sources

Case LawFRAND/SEPJurisdiction

Related insights

See the data behind the analysis.

Every article here is built on UPClytics — cross-case UPC analytics on divisions, judges, firms, and outcomes.