Unified Patent Court – Mannheim Local Division, 30 January 2026 (UPC_CFI_365/2023)
In a second enforcement round following its merits decision, the Mannheim Local Division confirmed a substantial penalty order for continued non-compliance with obligations to provide information, recall products and destroy infringing items. Beyond the concrete compliance issues, the order contains an extensive discussion on how far UPC decisions can be enforced when they concern conduct outside UPC territory.
The Division held that a penalty order under Rule 354.4 RoP may be issued by the judge-rapporteur. Referring to Rule 1.2 RoP, it reasoned that acts attributed to “the Court” may in principle be performed by the presiding judge or judge-rapporteur unless a rule explicitly reserves the act to the full panel. Rule 354.4 RoP, in the Court’s view, does not contain such an exclusive reservation.
Accordingly, a party challenging such an order must first pursue panel review under Rule 333 RoP before turning to the Court of Appeal. Leave to appeal was nevertheless granted in view of the limited UPC case law on enforcement.
In an obiter dictum of broader significance, the Court drew a strict distinction between the UPC’s international jurisdiction on the merits and the enforceability of its decisions in non-UPC states.
Within the territory of the UPC Contracting Member States, UPC decisions are immediately enforceable. For territories outside the UPC system, however, the Court considered that coercive enforcement of UPC orders — in particular the imposition of penalties for non-compliance with an injunction relating to foreign territory — presupposes prior recognition of the UPC decision by the courts of the state concerned, unless an applicable recognition regime provides otherwise.
The Court thus signalled that a UPC injunction with cross-border reach does not automatically translate into immediately enforceable penalty exposure for foreign-market conduct.
At the same time, the Court accepted that certain enforcement measures may still be ordered and enforced within UPC territory even if they relate factually to activities abroad. Where the infringing manufacture takes place in a UPC state, the defendant may be ordered to provide information about downstream sales outside the UPC. Such disclosure serves the purpose of quantifying damages for the infringement committed within UPC territory and is directed at a defendant established there. In that constellation, the Court did not see the same comity concerns as with direct enforcement of foreign-market injunction effects.
