Context:
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales (EWCA) agreed with Nokia that Acer and ASUS are not entitled to a global interim license and global RAND
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(reasonable and non-discriminatory) determination from a UK court after declining Nokia’s arbitration
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The Unified Patent Court (UPC) continues to expand its caseload at a significant pace in 2026, but the more consequential development may be a gradual redistribution of litigation activity away from Germany-based divisions (Munich, Dusseldorf, Mannheim, and Hamburg). The latest statistics (
) through April 2026 indicate a steady stream of filings but also an increasingly visible diversification in forum selection across the UPC system.
Through April, the court logged 170 new (2026) cases (of all categories) at the Court of First Instance (CFI), up from 132 over the same stretch in 2025. Although April itself was somewhat softer than March, recording 45 new filings compared to 53 the month before, the broader trend remains firmly upward.
German dominance begins to ease
Context:
Since the start of the second Trump Administration in early 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has ramped up discretionary denials of inter partes reviews (IPRs) as it adopts a more restrictive policy on the patent review proceedings introduced under the 2011 America Invents Act (AIA). The result has been a precipitous drop-off in IPR petitions and a corresponding decline in institution rate (
May 4, 2026
ip fray
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