UPC’s Mannheim LD imposes €1.72M contempt fine on Kodak for insufficient information, recall, destruction; discusses cross-border enforcement

Context:

• In the non-BSH part of Fujifilm v. Kodak, the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Mannheim Local Division (LD) held the defendant in contempt (item 2.1 of our July 26, 2025 UPC Roundup) of several parts of its judgment. Compliance with the sales ban was not at issue, but with the orders to recall, remove from all channels and destroy any infringing goods as well as the requirement to provide an accounting for damages. Kodak was ordered to pay a €100K lump-sum penalty for past non-compliance, along with daily fines for continued non-compliance.
• But the Court of Appeal (CoA) threw out parts of the decision and seized the opportunity to demand a high degree of upfront clarity regarding the (maximum) amounts of any penalties (October 18, 2025 ip fray article). At the time we thought it was too early to tell which side had the greater benefit from the decision as one would have to see the impact of any follow-up contempt motion.
• By coincidence, it was also the Mannheim LD that threatened a €50M contempt fine against Amazon in an antisuit context (December 25, 2025 ip fray article). Even that amount would be supported by EU law (December 26, 2025 ip fray article).

What’s new: On Tuesday (January 20, 2026), Presiding Judge Prof. Peter Tochtermann, acting as judge-rapporteur, handed down a new contempt ruling in Fujifilm v. Kodak. For non-compliance after the issuance of the first contempt ruling, Kodak has now been sanctioned to the tune of €1.72M ($2M). Kodak was found

• not to have provided sufficiently clear information on past infringement,
• to have kept “samples” that could still be used for printing purposes, and
• not to have reached out to all customers for recall purposes based on a “shelf life” theory that relies on customers not using products after 10 months.