Recent Unified Patent Court (UPC) case law shows a clear trend: entities holding indispensable regulatory roles, such as CE marking holders, their EU authorized representatives, or marketing authorization holders, may qualify as jurisdictionally relevant anchor defendants. In certain circumstances, this allows UPC judges to grant injunctions with effects extending beyond the UPC territory.

By suing an entity holding an indispensable regulatory role established in a UPC Contracting Member State (CMS), a patentee may seek to bring non-CMS co-defendants before the UPC under Article 8(1) Brussels I-bis, and claim an injunction against all defendants. This approach was confirmed in a UPC decision of 14 August 2025 (UPC_CFI_387/2025). The Hamburg Local Division held that an EU authorized representative qualifies as an intermediary in the EU distribution chain and can serve as an anchor defendant. The Court emphasized that EU law makes the authorized representative an indispensable link in placing CE-marked products on the EU market. On that basis, jurisdiction was accepted against both the anchor defendant and the non-CMS co-defendants, not only in respect of UPC territory, but also for non-CMS EU Member States, including Spain.

An additional jurisdictional route may lie in Article 7(2) Brussels I-bis. If the acts of an entity holding an indispensable regulatory role qualify as the event giving rise to the damage, cross-border jurisdiction may arise. This approach was applied in a UPC decision of 2 October 2025 (UPC_CFI_162/2024), where the Mannheim Local Division considered itself competent vis-à-vis a Korean defendant because the event giving rise to damage was alleged to have taken place in Germany, where its European sales branch and CE-marking importer was established.

National courts are moving in the same direction. In the Netherlands, it is established case law that a court has cross-border jurisdiction to hear claims relating to unlawful facilitation abroad by a marketing authorization holder by allowing other entities to put a patent-protected product on the market. This was confirmed in a decision of 1 October 2025 (ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2025:18108) by the District Court of the Hague.

Taken together, these developments show that regulatory roles influence the assessment of cross-border jurisdiction. For patentees, this creates opportunities to obtain cross-border relief. For companies making regulatory structuring decisions, such as choosing which group entity holds a regulatory role, it highlights the need to take into account jurisdictional exposure.