UK High Court sees an increase in new cases as tensions with UPC intensify
After years of decline, the UK High Court has seen a surge of newly filed patent cases in 2025. Case numbers at the IPEC also increased, albeit at a much lower rate. The heated discussion with the UPC and German courts over interim licences and subsequent ASIs has lately been the focus of attention.
23 April 2026 by Konstanze Richter
In recent years, the UK High Court — like other national courts — had seen a decrease in newly filed patent cases, reaching an all-time low in 2022. However, last year, according to the UK civil justice statistics, the UK High Court recorded significantly more cases than in 2024. The rise from 44 to 58 new patent cases in 2025 constitutes an increase of nearly 32%.
This brought the court back to near pre-Covid levels. After a peak in 2016 and 2017, with 71 and 85 new cases respectively, the court still counted 55 newly filed patent cases in 2019. Numbers then fell to a record low of 35 in 2022, before slowly recovering to 44 in 2024.
Like the High Court, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court saw an increase in cases last year, albeit on a much smaller scale. The numbers rose from 141 in the previous year to 147 in the 12 months from January to December 2025. The moderate increase of 4.2% marks the third consecutive year of growth for the IPEC, a specialist subdivision within the Business and Property Courts of the UK High Court. However, the UK statistics do not specify how many IPEC cases relate to patents.
While the IPEC primarily serves UK companies in patent disputes, the High Court has established itself as an international forum. Only seven High Court cases involve only UK companies, compared to 95 at the IPEC.
Interim licences in crosshairs
Most new High Court cases pit UK companies against foreign entities. In only two High Court cases and one IPEC case, neither the claimant nor defendant was based in the UK or EU.
Many cases dealt with by the UK patent courts relate to life sciences disputes, such as AstraZeneca vs Viatris, Teva and Glenmark over dapagliflozin, Regeneron vs Formycon/Klinge over Eylea, and Sandoz vs Bayer over damages regarding Xarelto.
However, mobile and digital communications disputes, especially video technology, are becoming more prevalent. Examples include Nokia vs Paramount and Warner Brothers over video coding and Huawei vs MediaTek over 5G.
An increasing number of these hi-tech disputes focus on applications for interim licences, such as in ZTE vs Samsung and Lenovo vs Ericsson, both over mobile communications, and Huawei vs TP Link over WiFi 6. Amazon seeking an interim licence from InterDigital famously led to frictions between the UK High Court and the UPC.
Never before had the competition between the courts and the conflicting systems been as visible. While the UK High Court has been the only court in years to set global FRAND rates, the UPC is now also opening up to this. Furthermore, Munich Regional Court now also examines comparative licences by default to assess whether licence offers in SEP disputes are FRAND or not.
Three courts with growing figures
With the current figures, the UK High Court joins the ranks of European courts that have recently recorded a significant increase in newly filed patent cases. According to its latest statistics, 125 new proceedings were launched at the UPC in the first quarter of 2026, including 52 infringement and 60 counterclaims for revocation. Since its launch in June 2023, the court has seen 1,183 patent cases in total.
The figures from Germany, where the number of newly filed patent lawsuits rose again for the first time in 2025 after years of decline, were also surprising. This development is being driven primarily by Munich, whose regional court recorded an all-time high of 332 new patent lawsuits. The number of cases at the 7th and 21st Civil Chambers rose by 43.7% compared to the 231 new lawsuits in the previous year. For the first time, Munich exceeded the threshold of 300 cases.
Meanwhile, French courts recorded a decline in the number of cases in 2024, and recent research suggests that the downward trend continued last year. However, data for 2025 is not yet available. A similar picture emerges in the Netherlands, where detailed figures on patent proceedings have not been published for several years. However, significantly fewer judgments combined with statements by Dutch lawyers suggest that the Dutch patent chambers have also had declining cases for years — a trend that the UPC has accelerated.
