Pleading the long arm: what a UPC statement of claim must carry

Since the UPC Court of Appeal has accepted to rule on foreign parts of a European patent, the question put to claimants has changed. It is no longer whether the court has jurisdiction, it is whether the statement of claim carries a claim that holds. The two are not the same, and the difference is paid for.

Winning jurisdiction is not having a claim

The case of Kodak v Fujifilm, Court of Appeal, 2 June 2026 shows it plainly. Jurisdiction was upheld, the claims for Infrigement were dismissed, and the claimant was ordered to compensate the enforcement of the first instance decision. A statement of claim that polishes its jurisdiction section and neglects the four links that follow produces exactly that result.

On jurisdiction, the essentials are now settled: a defendant domiciled in the territory of the Court falls under Article 4 of the Brussels I bis Regulation, a defendant established in a third State falls under Article 71b(2), which refers back to the heads of jurisdiction in Chapter II. The so-called long-arm jurisdiction has its conditions, and those conditions must appear in the statement of claim itself, not in the reply.

Who did what, in which territory

Each act must be attributed to a named entity and an identified territory. Group structures are the most frequent trap: in the case above, the parent company was reproached only with control over its subsidiary, which is not enough where the subsidiary itself does not infringe. Shareholding control is not an act of infringement.

Proof of that attribution is prepared before the writ. The Court of Appeal accepted, in WEPA v Essity of 3 September 2026, that measures preserving evidence under Article 60 of the Agreement may cover promotional documents, which identify precisely the actors in a distribution chain.

The applicable law is pleaded in the statement of claim

Each designation calls for the law of the country for which protection is claimed, under Article 8(1) of the Rome II Regulation. Announcing it is not enough, its content must be articulated. In Kodak v Fujifilm, the conditions for accessory liability under English law were not met, the claimant having failed to establish knowledge, by an identified entity, of the essential facts of the conduct complained of.

The drafting consequence is clear: the foreign law, its conditions and its exceptions are set out in the originating document, with evidence and sources. A statement of claim that merely transposes French or German reasoning to a foreign designation is an incomplete one.

Each designation on its validity track

BSH Hausgeräte v Electrolux of 25 February 2025 imposes two regimes. For designations of Member States that are not party to the Agreement and of States bound by the Lugano Convention, the court hearing the infringement claim cannot examine validity: a national révocation action must be pending, and the decision may be made conditional on its outcome. For the other designations, including the United Kingdom, validity may be examined between the parties.

The Court of Appeal has also referred to the Court of Justice the question of the reach of provisional measures against defendants established in third States, in Dyson v Dreame of 6 March 2026. Until the answer is known, the statement of claim must hold on both hypotheses.

Relief is framed territory by territory

Article 34 of the Agreement governs the reach of the decision, and theinjunction sought must be cut up accordingly: this prohibition for that designation, that recall measure for another, with royalties and damages calculated under the law applicable to each. The leverage that extended jurisdiction provides does not relieve the claimant of establishing liability in each territory.

The drafting order that follows is counter-intuitive. One first identifies the actors and the territories, then the applicable law and its content, then the validity track of each designation, then the relief, and the jurisdiction section is written last. A preliminary table, mapping each defendant and each designation against those five links, shows on one page which combinations to drop before filing.

The decisions cited are tracked one by one in our UPC Litigation Watch and the outcomes by division in our UPC statistics. We draft and argue these documents before the Unified Patent Court as well as before the French courts, in particular as correspondent in France for patents and the UPC. Contact us.

This article is an updated adaptation of an analysis by Matthieu Dhenne originally published on Kluwer Patent Blog on 29 September 2026: Pleading the Long Arm: What a UPC Statement of Claim Must Carry Beyond Jurisdiction. Official sources: CJEU, 25 February 2025, BSH Hausgeräte v Electrolux, C-339/22 ; Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, OJ C 175 of 20 June 2013.