UPC Unfiltered, by Willem Hoyng - UPC Decisions Week 42, 2026

Professor Willem Hoyng, chair of the UPC Advisory Board, published his weekly UPC Unfiltered commentary on October 19, 2026, covering decisions released by the Unified Patent Court in week 42. Fee and deadline discipline dominates. In Swarco v Yunex, the Munich Local Division refused a revision request under Rule 333 RoP: Yunex first filed the request on September 30 without paying the fee, and its refiling with payment on October 1 was late, because a filing is complete only upon payment of the fee under Rule 15.2 RoP. Yunex had asked only for an extension, not re-establishment of rights, and neither could have succeeded because the late filing stemmed from a representative's heavy workload.

In Rematec v Europe Forestry, the Court of Appeal confirmed that no appeal is possible against a decision on re-establishment of rights (Rule 320.7 RoP) and that an extension of time under Rule 9.3(a) RoP is not permitted. Hoyng counts six professional mistakes by the representatives, from filing the costs request late to ignoring the registry's warning on the last day, and calls it an important and expensive lesson - softened only by Rematec having overturned the first-instance decision on the merits.

Extension practice cut both ways this week. The Court of Appeal granted Fujifilm a one-week extension to respond to Kodak's rehearing request, while the same court refused Promosome's one-month extension in three appeals against BioNTech, where heavy workload and Bavarian school holidays were pleaded as exceptional circumstances - a request Hoyng says makes him laugh. On evidence measures, fiskaly v Swissbit and Topsoe v Sypox clarify the review landscape for ex parte evidentiary seizures: a Rule 197.3 review tests only whether the seizure order was justified when issued, while the release of seized information is a case management order reviewable under Rule 333, with confidentiality clubs available for genuine business secrets. In Fives v REEL, the Court of Appeal's judge-rapporteur restricted access to a confidential Statement of Response to the opposing representatives, their team and experts pending the confidentiality decision.

The week's substantive decisions include Merz v Viatris, where the Paris Local Division bifurcated infringement from revocation and left the stay request - based on parallel French national revocation proceedings over the same SPC - to the Central Division under the Brussels Regulation; Aesculap v Boijn Medical Instrument, where Dusseldorf refused to correct an injunction's suspensive condition into a resolutive one, holding the alleged slip outside Rule 353 RoP; Barco v Yealink, where the Court of Appeal upheld Brussels' refusal of a late application to amend the patent, faulting Barco for not aligning its EPO opposition strategy with the UPC case; and Align v Angelalign, a full merits win for Align in Paris featuring broad claim interpretation, dismissal of the UK infringement claim for late and insufficient evidence, and an injunction granted without security or publication.

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