Beware Overreach By EU Courts In Foreign Patent Disputes

In an age of developed international commerce, global disputes arise between sophisticated international businesses. Not infrequently, they involve patents and the terms of licences to patents. Patents are territorial in nature, as are the courts of sovereign states. How such courts seek to resolve international patent disputes therefore requires careful navigation of international jurisdictional norms.

In 2022, the European Union (EU) instigated the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) dispute resolution mechanism in response to courts in China seeking to enjoin litigants from enforcing their foreign patents in the courts of the relevant foreign country. In 2025, a case is proceeding in the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in which the CJEU is asked to consider the jurisdiction of courts of EU Member States (and therefore the Unified Patent Court (UPC) too) to hear and determine disputes as to patents to third states outside the EU. Most recently, the UPC's Local