UPC Court of Appeal Pushes for Clarity on “Anchor Defendant” Jurisdiction

In February 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) significantly expanded the reach of Europe’s Unified Patent Court (UPC) through its landmark decision in BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux, which confirmed in part that the UPC may decide infringement claims arising in non-UPC countries against defendants domiciled in UPC states. That August, in Dyson v. Dreame, the UPC’s Hamburg Local Division (Hamburg LD) then took BSH a step further by endorsing the concept of an “anchor defendant”—under which the UPC has jurisdiction over acts of non-UPC infringement from an entity not based in a UPC country as long as another codefendant from the same “company group” is based within the UPC. On March 6, the UPC Court of Appeal took the notable step of referring the relevant portion of that case to the CJEU—the first time the UPC has ever made such a referral. Then, on March 13, the Court of Appeal ruled in another case that the UPC lacks jurisdiction over non-UPC infringement where no related codefendants are based in the UPC (i.e., where there is no anchor defendant).