Long-Arm Jurisdiction at the UPC: Can a German Court Decide UK Infringement?

In late January 2025, the Düsseldorf Local Division of the Unified Patent Court did something that, on its face, sounds impossible: it accepted that it could rule on whether a German defendant infringed the United Kingdom part of a European patent — even though the UK never joined the UPC and left the EU years ago. That proposition, now travelling under the label UPC long-arm jurisdiction, may be the most consequential strategic development of the Court's second year, turning the UPC from a court for 18 European states into a potential one-stop forum for cross-border relief reaching the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and beyond.

The reasoning did not come out of nowhere. It rests on a February 2025 ruling from the Court of Justice of the EU, and has already been applied a second time — against a Hong Kong manufacturer, for the Spanish part of a patent. Here is how the doctrine was built, where it stands, and what it means if you are choosing a forum or assessing your exposure.

The foundation: BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux

Everything starts with the CJEU's Grand Chamber decision in BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux (Case C-339/22), handed down on 25 February 2025. The dispute itself was ordinary — BSH sued Electrolux in Sweden over a European patent (vacuum-cleaner technology) validated across several EU states and in Turkey. The jurisdictional question was not.

Electrolux argued that because it challenged the patent's validity as a defence, and validity is the exclusive preserve of the courts of each state of registration under Article 24(4) of the Brussels I bis Regulation, the Swedish court could not hear infringement of the foreign-validated parts at all. The CJEU disagreed. It held that the court of the Member State where the defendant is domiciled (Article 4(1)) keeps jurisdiction over an infringement action concerning a patent validated in another state, even where the defendant raises invalidity as a defence — though that domicile court cannot itself rule on the foreign right's validity with erga omnes effect.

Two features of BSH matter most for the UPC. First, infringement and validity can be decoupled for jurisdictional purposes. Second — and this is the part that reaches the UK, Switzerland and Turkey — for patents validated in non-EU "third states," a Member State court may even assess validity as a defence, with effect only inter partes (between the parties). As Clifford Chance put it, the decision lets a patentee "bring all his or her infringement claims before a single court." The UPC, treated as a court common to its Contracting Member States, inherited that logic almost immediately.

Fujifilm v. Kodak: jurisdiction over the UK part

The first application came in Fujifilm v. Kodak before the Düsseldorf Local Division (decision in late January 2025; UPC_CFI_355/2023). Fujifilm asserted EP 3 594 009 — a lithographic printing-plate patent — against three Kodak entities, all domiciled in Germany. Crucially, the patent had been validated in Germany and the United Kingdom, and Fujifilm asked the Court to rule on infringement of both parts.

Kodak objected that the UPC could not touch the UK designation. The Düsseldorf division rejected the objection, holding in a much-quoted passage: "If the defendant is domiciled in a Contracting Member State (here: Germany), the Unified Patent Court has jurisdiction to hear the infringement action in respect of the UK part of the patent in suit." Nothing in the UPC Agreement, it reasoned, excludes decisions having effect beyond the Contracting Member States.

Here the honesty matters, and it cuts against the headline. Fujifilm did not win. On the merits, the division revoked EP 3 594 009 across the UPC territory for insufficiency and lack of novelty, and dismissed the infringement claim. Because the patent fell, the Court rendered no substantive finding on UK infringement, and it accepted it has no power to revoke the UK part, which survives under UK law. So the lasting precedent is narrow but powerful: the jurisdictional gateway to the UK was opened, even though the door, this time, led to a dead patent.

Dyson v. Dreame: the anchor-defendant move

If Fujifilm reached a non-UPC, non-EU state through a domiciled defendant, the next case showed how to reach a foreign defendant who is not domiciled in the UPC at all. In Dyson v. Dreame before the Hamburg Local Division (mid-2025), Dyson sought provisional measures covering both the UPC territory and Spain — an EU state that has not joined the UPC.

The obstacle was that the manufacturer, Dreame International, sits in Hong Kong. Dyson's answer was an anchor defendant: Eurep GmbH, a German company acting as Dreame's authorised EU representative for product-safety (CE) compliance. Under Article 8(1) of the Brussels I bis Regulation, claims against multiple defendants can be heard together, anchored to one defendant's domicile, where they are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear them in one go. The Hamburg division accepted that Eurep's German domicile supplied the anchor and concluded it had jurisdiction over the Hong Kong manufacturer not just for the UPC territory but for Spain as well — granting what has been described as the UPC's first BSH-based, and first Spanish, preliminary injunction.

That is the tactical lesson in one sentence: a co-defendant with a foothold in a Contracting Member State — a distributor, a subsidiary, an EU compliance representative — can pull an offshore manufacturer into the UPC's cross-border reach.

The cross-border map: which "foreign parts" the UPC has reached

The two decisions, read against BSH, sketch a forum that extends well past the 18 UPC states. The table below summarises what each ruling actually reached and on what basis.

The combined trajectory — and subsequent UPC rulings extending injunctions to bundles of non-UPC and non-EU designations — points the same way: a single UPC action can, in the right configuration, target a patent's life across the UK, Spain, Switzerland and Turkey at once.

What it means strategically — and where the limits bite

For patentees, the appeal is obvious. Instead of parallel suits in London, Madrid and a UPC division, a well-structured case may consolidate cross-border infringement before one court, on the UPC's fast timeline. The anchor-defendant tactic is the practical key: identify a defendant — distributor, importer, EU compliance rep — domiciled in a Contracting Member State, and the offshore manufacturer can travel with it.

For defendants, the exposure is symmetrical and easy to underestimate. A company sued at the UPC over its German activities may find the same action sweeping in its UK or Spanish sales. Validity challenges no longer wall off the foreign parts: under BSH, infringement of a foreign-validated patent can be decided even while you contest validity, and for non-EU designations the UPC may opine on validity inter partes. Choosing where you are domiciled, and which group entity acts as your EU representative, becomes a litigation-risk decision, not just a corporate one.

But two limits deserve flagging, because the reach is not unlimited:

• The UPC cannot kill a foreign patent. As Fujifilm confirmed, the Court can rule on infringement of, say, the UK part, but it cannot revoke it — that remains for UK courts and UK law.
• A judgment still has to be enforced abroad. A UPC long-arm decision is not automatically recognised in a non-UPC or non-EU state. Where no treaty governs recognition, enforcement against UK or Swiss assets runs through the national courts of that state — which may take their own view. Firms tracking the doctrine (Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance) consistently note this gap between asserting jurisdiction and actually collecting on it.

A concrete tie-in from our data

This is not an abstract debate for niche players. Fujifilm and Kodak are among the more active names in our UPC dataset — Fujifilm appears in 49 case records and Kodak (the principal German entity) in 47, spanning both claimant and respondent roles. The parties who built the leading long-arm precedent are repeat UPC litigants, which is precisely why a single jurisdictional ruling between them ripples across the wider docket.

What to watch

The open question now sits with the CJEU. Following the Dyson v. Dreame line, the UPC Court of Appeal has made its first preliminary-ruling referral to the CJEU on the scope of long-arm jurisdiction (referred in early 2026), asking how the EU jurisdiction rules apply when the UPC is asked to reach defendants outside the EU and infringement occurring in EU states that have not joined the UPC. The answers will set the outer boundary of the doctrine — in particular how far the anchor-defendant route and third-state reach actually extend.

Three things to track: (1) the CJEU referral, which could confirm, narrow or reshape the Fujifilm/Dyson logic; (2) whether more divisions issue cross-border injunctions over non-UPC designations, and how willing national courts prove to enforce them; and (3) how non-UPC jurisdictions — the UK above all — respond to having their patent designations adjudicated in Germany. The proposition that opened this article is no longer hypothetical. The fight now is over how far it goes.

Tracking who litigates where — and how cross-border exposure is shaping forum choice — is exactly what our UPC platform is built for. Explore the data.

Related reading

• UPC vs. National Courts: Where to Litigate Your European Patent in 2026
• How the Unified Patent Court Works: A Litigator's Guide to Divisions, Timelines & Outcomes
• The UPC in 2025: Five Decisions That Reshaped European Patent Litigation

Sources

• Court of Justice of the EU, BSH Hausgeräte GmbH v. Electrolux AB, C-339/22 (Grand Chamber, 25 Feb 2025)
• Clifford Chance, "The dawn and rise of the long-arm jurisdiction of the UPC" — https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/ip-insights/2026/01/the-dawn-and-rise-of-the-long-arm-jurisdiction-of-the-upc.html
• Baker McKenzie, "EMEA: UPC's Long-Arm Jurisdiction — A Shifting Landscape on European Patent Litigation" (Feb 2026) — https://www.bakermckenzie.com/en/insight/publications/2026/02/emea-upcs-long-arm-jurisdiction
• Kather Augenstein, "'Long arm jurisdiction' before the UPC: LD Düsseldorf affirms jurisdiction for the British part of a European patent" — https://www.katheraugenstein.com/en/news/long-arm-jurisdiction-before-the-upc-local-division-dusseldorf-affirms-its-juristiction-for-the-british-part-of-a-european-patent/
• D Young & Co, "UPC crosses borders and breaks boundaries: long arm jurisdiction (Fujifilm v Kodak)" — https://www.dyoung.com/en/knowledgebank/articles/upc-long-arm-jurisdiction-fujifilm-kodak
• UPClytics.com — internal dataset of classified UPC decisions (snapshot June 2026 build).