UPC Unfiltered, by Willem Hoyng – UPC Decisions Week 39, 2026

In 'UPC Unfiltered' for week 39 of 2026, published September 28, Willem Hoyng of Hoyng Rokh Monegier reviews the latest Unified Patent Court decisions, led by a wave of settlements between Meta/Facebook and three separate SEP holders. In Huawei v Meta (Mannheim, late-published September 18), the parties settled the dispute over EP 3 471 419, and the judge-rapporteur ordered a 50% refund of court fees — 9,950 euros — on a dispute value set at 1 million euros per action. Hoyng questions that valuation as rather low for litigation whose consequence could have been shutting down Facebook, noting that a counterclaim's value may generally be 50% higher than the infringement action's, and calls 9,950 euros 'an extremely low price to pay for a settlement' — and for a court that has to finance itself.

In NovaCloud v Meta (Mannheim, the same day), the claimant pressed for a 60% fee refund, arguing the Court of Appeal had been wrong to apply the new 50% refund rule to cases filed before January 1, 2026; the judge-rapporteur nonetheless ordered 50%, and Hoyng agrees with the claimant in substance but concedes it is the Court of Appeal that decides. In ETRI v Meta (Dusseldorf, September 21), the court first granted a stay because the parties' settlement required implementation — a 'useful stay,' Hoyng writes, since patentees generally do not want to withdraw before payment is received — then permitted withdrawal and ordered the 50% refund.

In Sidel v Omnia (Court of Appeal, September 21), the court held that competence is determined by what is stated in the Statement of Claim: Omnia's request for a declaration of non-infringement of two patents — filed before grant — was clearly within the Central Division's competence, and Sidel's opt-out, filed after the action, came too late. The court also clarified the strict 15-day timelines for appealing a rejected preliminary objection and for requesting discretionary review. Hoyng expects the court will eventually confirm that a case can be brought once the EPO has announced its decision to grant, so long as a patent is in force at the time of decision.

Elsewhere, the Paris Local Division's interim conference order in KEEEX v Adobe revealed a proposed case value of some 6.6 billion euros in an AI-related patent dispute over EP 2 949 070 — 'an astronomical amount of money,' Hoyng remarks — with the October 6 hearing to be conducted entirely in French. In Maxell v Samsung (Munich, September 22), the court revoked Maxell's EP 2 403 266 on content transfer between phone and TV displays, endorsing the approach that a plurality of routine modifications amounting to mere aggregation cannot establish inventive step absent a synergistic effect. And in 2Seventy Bio v Johnson & Johnson (Brussels, September 23), the court set out a five-condition framework for ordering the production of evidence under R. 190 RoP and rejected the defendants' entitlement challenge against patentee NIH, prompting Hoyng to question whether third parties should be able to contest entitlement at all given Article 138 EPC.

Original Link: https://www.hoyngrokhmonegier.com/news-insights/detail/upc-unfiltered-by-willem-hoyng-upc-decisions-week-39-2026