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The UPC's First Permanent SEP Injunction: Philips v. Belkin and the FRAND Landscape

With Philips v. Belkin upheld on appeal in October 2025, the UPC has its first standing SEP injunction. What it means for FRAND strategy across Europe.

In October 2025 the Unified Patent Court's first standard-essential-patent injunction became permanent. On 3 October 2025 the Court of Appeal largely upheld — and in part strengthened — the Munich Local Division's injunction against Belkin in favour of Philips, over a patent essential to the Qi wireless-charging standard. The UPC had granted SEP injunctions before; this is the first one to survive appeal and stand as a final, enforceable order across most of the Court's territory. For implementers with European exposure, that is the development that changes the math.

The story matters because of what a standing UPC SEP injunction does to a FRAND negotiation. It is not a damages award you can budget for. It is the power to switch off sales of a product across seven or more European markets at once — and, because SEPs are licensed worldwide, the practical pressure to settle globally rather than litigate market-by-market. This is the single biggest lever the UPC has added to the SEP toolkit, and Philips v. Belkin is the case that proved it works.

How Philips v. Belkin became the first standing SEP injunction

The patent in suit was EP 2 867 997 B1, covering wireless inductive power transfer — the negotiation phase between transmitter and receiver that lets a charger and a device agree operating parameters. It had been declared essential to the Qi standard maintained by the Wireless Power Consortium. The Munich Local Division found the patent valid as granted and infringed by Belkin, and granted a permanent injunction covering several UPC states (reported as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden), with a carve-out for the German Belkin entities because a conflicting national judgment was already in place. On 3 October 2025 the Court of Appeal largely defended that injunction and partly strengthened the recall-and-destruction remedies — and with appeals exhausted, the order became the UPC's first SEP injunction to take permanent effect.

The twist is that no FRAND defence was decided, because none was available. A FRAND defence presupposes that the patent confers market power; the Court reasoned that Qi is only one of several ways to charge a device, so the patent did not. That makes Philips v. Belkin a milestone for the remedy — a final pan-European SEP injunction — rather than for the FRAND framework. For the framework, you have to look back to the case that started the arc.

A note on terminology: Belkin has been variously called the UPC's "first permanent," "first full," or "first-ever" SEP injunction. They are the same thing from different angles. Panasonic v. OPPO granted an SEP injunction eleven months earlier, but the parties settled before it became a standing order — so Belkin is the first SEP injunction to actually remain in force. We frame it that way throughout.

The framework underneath it: Panasonic v. OPPO and Huawei v. ZTE

The UPC's first substantive SEP/FRAND decision was Panasonic v. OPPO, handed down by the Mannheim Local Division on 22 November 2024 (UPC_CFI_210/2023). There the patent was EP 2 568 724 B1, essential to the 4G/LTE standard. The court found it valid, infringed and essential; classified OPPO as an unwilling licensee; rejected OPPO's FRAND counterclaim as unfounded; and granted an injunction covering Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden, plus €250,000 in provisional damages. The parties later settled, which is why the injunction did not endure — but the reasoning did, and it is now the UPC's FRAND template.

Three principles from Mannheim define the current landscape:

  • The Huawei v. ZTE roadmap governs. The court ran the CJEU's five-step negotiation framework — notification with claim charts, the implementer's expression of willingness, a FRAND offer, a diligent counter-offer, and the provision of accounts and security if talks fail.
  • The German "flexible" reading wins over the EC's "strict" one. The court rejected the European Commission's view that each step is a rigid precondition for the next, holding instead that FRAND compliance is assessed contextually and according to commercial practice — squarely the approach German national courts had developed.
  • SEPs are not second-class rights. The Mannheim judges were explicit that an SEP holder who has behaved in a FRAND manner is entitled to an injunction, full stop.

Read together, Panasonic v. OPPO supplied the FRAND analysis and Philips v. Belkin supplied the durable remedy. The combination is what makes the UPC a genuine SEP forum rather than a promising experiment.

Key UPC SEP decisions at a glance

CaseDivisionDateSignificance
Panasonic v. OPPOLD Mannheim22 Nov 2024First substantive SEP/FRAND decision; injunction (DE/FR/IT/NL/SE); applied Huawei v. ZTE; OPPO held an unwilling licensee. Later settled.
Philips v. Belkin (merits)LD MunichNov 2024First full SEP merits ruling; injunction over a Qi-standard patent; FRAND defence unavailable (no market power).
Philips v. Belkin (appeal)Court of Appeal3 Oct 2025Injunction largely upheld and partly strengthened — the UPC's first SEP injunction to become final/permanent.
Sun Patent Trust v. VivoLD Paris / CoAOct–Nov 2025SEP holder seeks a FRAND-rate determination; CoA refused Vivo's stay and will decide separately whether the UPC can set rates.

Why a pan-European SEP injunction is a settlement lever

National SEP litigation is a war of attrition — win in one country, the implementer keeps selling in the rest while you re-file. A UPC injunction collapses that. One order reaches most of the Union's market at once, and because SEPs are licensed on a portfolio, worldwide basis, an implementer staring at exclusion from seven European markets typically finds it cheaper to take a global licence than to fight on. Faced with exclusion from major portions of Europe, infringers routinely come to the table and accept a worldwide licence rather than litigate market-by-market. That is precisely why Panasonic v. OPPO settled, and why the Qi patent pool's position strengthened the moment Belkin's injunction held on appeal.

This is also where the UPC's posture diverges from the two reference points practitioners know. German national courts gave the UPC its FRAND DNA — the flexible, injunction-friendly reading of Huawei v. ZTE — but reach only one market. The UK took the opposite road: since Unwired Planet v. Huawei, the High Court is the forum that will set a global FRAND rate, an attraction the UPC has not yet matched. The UPC's comparative advantage today is the fast, broad injunction; the UK's is rate-setting. The open question — the one the next section turns on — is whether the UPC is about to claim the UK's ground as well.

What this means for SEP practitioners

For the people structuring SEP campaigns and defences, three things follow from October 2025:

  • For SEP holders: the UPC is now a proven venue for a durable injunction, not just a favourable judgment. A pan-European order that survives appeal is leverage for a worldwide licence — file with the Huawei v. ZTE steps documented from day one, because the implementer's "willingness" is assessed on its conduct, not its rhetoric.
  • For implementers: behave as a demonstrably willing licensee early. OPPO's downfall was being classified unwilling; Belkin's was that no FRAND defence was even available. Assume the injunction is real and reachable across the territory, and price settlement against that, not against a damages number.
  • For everyone: watch the standard, not just the patent. Belkin turned partly on Qi being one charging method among several — i.e., no market power, no FRAND defence. Whether an SEP confers market power is becoming a threshold question in itself.

What to watch

The next frontier is jurisdiction over the FRAND rate itself. In Sun Patent Trust v. Vivo — Sun Patent being a Panasonic-affiliated licensing vehicle — the SEP holder has asked the Paris Local Division to set the terms of a FRAND licence, a striking reversal of the usual pattern in which implementers raise FRAND as a shield. In late October the Paris LD rejected Vivo's jurisdiction challenge, and at the end of November the Court of Appeal refused Vivo's request to stay the main proceedings, signalling it will decide whether the UPC can determine FRAND rates in a separate appeal while Paris presses ahead. Ericsson has reportedly taken the same step.

If the UPC answers yes, Europe will have two courts capable of setting global FRAND rates — the UK High Court and the UPC — and the forum contest between them will define SEP strategy for the rest of the decade. If it answers no, the UPC remains the continent's injunction engine while London keeps the rate-setting franchise. Either way, the question that Philips v. Belkin left open — what the UPC will do with FRAND, beyond enjoining — is now squarely on the docket.

SEP and telecom disputes are the largest technology cluster in our corpus, and the repeat players above — Panasonic, Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson, OPPO, Sun Patent Trust — are among the most active parties at the Court. If you track SEP exposure across the UPC, our platform classifies every SEP and FRAND outcome by division, party and standard so you can see the pattern before it reaches your portfolio.

Sources

FRAND/SEPInjunctions

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