UPC received 50% more infringement cases in 2025

The Unified Patent Court ceased publishing statistics on current number cases since July 2025. In response to a query from JUVE Patent, the UPC announced it would publish an annual report for 2025. However, the court has yet to publish the document.

It is therefore not yet publicly known how many cases the court received last year. Nevertheless, the UPC website’s new case search should provide reliable information on this as it is now possible to search for both case numbers and cases during specific time periods.

According to the case search, the UPC received 239 new infringement cases in 2025. In the previous year, there were 155, which is a significant increase of 54.2%. At the end of December 2025, the UPC had therefore received a total of 471 infringement cases since its launch in June 2023. At the end of 2024, the figure was 239.

The figures for applications for a preliminary injunction are also rising, albeit at a slower rate than for main proceedings. The UPC received 36 new PI cases in 2025, compared to 32 in the previous year. In total, the UPC has received 80 PI cases since its inception.

Restraint in revocation actions

While the number of infringement and PI cases increased significantly recently, companies showed somewhat more restraint in revocation actions and counterclaims for revocation. The court received 27 new revocation actions in 2025, compared to 31 in the previous year.

Defendant companies filed 83 counterclaims for revocation in 2025, compared to 118 in 2024. At the end of 2025, the UPC had a total of 79 revocation actions and 228 counterclaims for revocation.

The case search does not provide any analysis as to why the court receives more infringement and PI cases but fewer revocation actions.

Counterclaims for infringement have not played a role at the UPC since 2024. In 2024, the court received three of these counterclaims. No further claims have been received since then.

By the end of December 2025, the UPC had received a total of 796 new cases. This number includes 158 new appeals.This also means that the Court of Appeal is also receiving more and more cases. In 2024, parties decided to lodge an 116 appeal against decisions of the Court of First Instance.

A question of service

The figures currently researched by JUVE Patent are probably already very close to reality. However, there is some uncertainty regarding the new appeals filed with the court in the third quarter of 2025. The UPC only publishes new lawsuits in the case search once they have been served on the defendant company. This usually takes a little longer, especially for Asian defendants. However, only a few cases are likely to be affected in mid-February, and these have not yet been made public.

Direct service, as was done by presiding judge Peter Tochtermann to Amazon’s lawyer Klaus Haft in the dispute with InterDigital, is likely to be a rare curiosity in the court’s daily life. At a hearing in the anti-interim-licence-injunction dispute between the two companies in mid-November, Judge Tochtermann handed over the statements of claim in the infringement cases to lawyer Haft at the start of the AILI-hearing and registered them as served.

The top cases 2025

That the UPC has recently attracted significantly more infringement and PI cases is not surprising. Experts have repeatedly emphasised this at countless conferences since summer 2025 and have spoken of the court’s success. The new appointments of UPC judges and new panels at the Court of Appeal and the Munich and Düsseldorf local divisions were also seen as an indication of the court’s increasing workload.

JUVE Patent had not only observed an increase in disputes in the areas of mobile communication, wifi and audio and video coding. More and more lawsuits concerning medical devices were also filed. However, the most important development in the past year is likely to be a slight increase in pharmaceutical and biotech cases, so that there is now talk that this important sector is also abandoning its initial reticence towards the new court.

These are the most important new cases filed with the UPC in the past year:

• February 2025: InterDigital against Walt Disney over video streaming technology
• Januar 2025: ZTE against Samsung over  4G and 5G standards
• August 2025: Huawei against TP-Link over Wifi technology
• June 2025: Abbott against Sinocare over glucose monitoring devices
• July 2025: GSK against BioNTech and Pfizer over mRNA
• July 2025: GSK against Moderna over mRNA
• January 2025: BoehringerIngelheim against Zentiva over respiratory drug Ofev
• August/September 2025: InterDigital against Amazon over video streaming technology

Recently, it has become apparent that the UPC has grown at the expense of national patent courts. Most national patent courts have recently seen a decline in the number of cases. Tomorrow, JUVE Patent will publish the latest figures for German courts.