UPC’s first referral to CJEU

Dyson v. Dreame
UPC_CoA_789/2025, order of 6 March 2026 ^[1]

Jurisdiction

The proceedings arise from a dispute between Dyson and companies associated with Dreame, a Chinese household appliance manufacturer. The dispute centres on alleged infringement of European Patent EP3119235, which relates to a handheld hair care device. The patent was nationally validated in Spain and registered as a unitary patent.

Dyson brought proceedings before the Hamburg Local Division of the UPC in May 2025 seeking provisional measures against several Dreame-related entities. The relevant defendants for the jurisdictional issues ultimately referred to the CJEU were:

• Dreame  International (Hongkong) Limited, the Hong Kong‑based operator of several country-specific websites, including country-specific web shops for Germany and Spain, amongst others; and
• Eurep GmbH, a company domiciled in Germany, which acted as Dreame’s “authorised representative” ^[2] under EU product safety legislation.

In August 2025, the Hamburg LD granted a preliminary injunction ordering that Dreame refrain from infringing the patent and that Eurep refrain from providing services for infringing the patent within the UPC territory and Spain, despite the fact that Spain is not a UPC country. The Hamburg LD relied on the presence of Eurep “anchor defendant”, domiciled in Germany and acting as an “intermediary” whose services were used to infringe the patent within the meaning of Article 11 of Directive 2004/48/EC (the “Enforcement Directive”).

Anchor defendant

Article 8(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 (the “Brussels Regulation”) provides an exception to the general rule that a defendant must be sued in the courts of its domicile, allowing multiple defendants to be sued together in the courts of one defendant’s domicile where the claims are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them jointly to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments.

In the present case, the Hamburg Local Division concluded that it had jurisdiction concerning the action brought against Eurep based on Eurep’s domicile in Germany, a UPC country. Furthermore, since Eurep is domiciled in a UPC country, jurisdiction was not limited to Eurep’s actions within UPC territory.

Jurisdiction was then extended to Hong Kong-based Dreame International based on the risk of irreconcilable judgements as set out in Article8(1) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation.

Appeal and referral

The Court of Appeal endorsed the Hamburg LD’s conclusion that it has jurisdiction over Eurep based on its domicile in Germany. However, the Court of Appeal states that the action brought against Dreame International, insofar as it relates to the territory of Spain, raises questions concerning the interpretation of the Brussels Regulation and the Enforcement Directive.

The questions essentially ask,

1. Whether circumstances where an alleged infringer domiciled outside the EU is sued together with an alleged EU‑based intermediary, may give rise to the “risk of irreconcilable judgments” in the sense of Article8(1) Brussels I Recast, read with Article 71b.
2. Whether Article 71b(2), second sentence, can itself provide a jurisdictional basis for provisional measures covering non‑UPC Member States(such as Spain) where the same products are marketed across UPC and non‑UPC states via materially identical websites.
3. The relevance of the use of an EU‑based intermediary when assessing that jurisdiction.
4. Whether, and under what conditions, provisional injunctions may be granted directly against an authorised representative.

Consequences

This referral represents the first preliminary reference from the UPC to the CJEU, and places the Court of Appeal at the centre of a broader debate on the outer limits of the UPC’s long‑arm jurisdiction and the role of intermediaries in cross‑border patent enforcement within the EU.

If the CJEU answers the first question in the affirmative, this will open the door for many other kinds of intermediaries, such as online service providers and platforms, to be used as intermediary anchor defendants. This may lead to more potential intermediaries being named as defendants, while giving claimants more options to expand the territorial scope of actions being before the UPC.

In any event, the CJEU referral will help to resolve the ongoing uncertainty around the limits of the UPC’s jurisdiction, though given the typical timeline of a CJEU referral, we should not expect a response from the CJEU before late 2028 at the earliest.

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[1] https://www.unifiedpatentcourt.org/en/node/182788

[2] An authorised representative is an EU‑based company legally appointed by a non‑EU manufacturer to act as its official contact in the EU and to carry out certain compliance and enforcement‑related obligations under EU product safety law when the manufacturer itself is not established in the EU.

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