OpenAI, Adobe win UPC long-arm appeal; French plaintiff can’t invoke French long-arm statute before Paris LD against non-UPCland defendants

Context:

• Last week, the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) Court of Appeal (CoA) heard an appeal by the defendants, the two largest ones of which are OpenAI and Adobe, over the long-arm jurisdiction claimed by the Paris Local Division (LD). As we reported earlier this week, the CoA gave a clear indication that the appeal was going to succeed and there was no long-arm jurisdiction over defendants based outside the UPC’s contracting member states (which we informally call “UPCland”) (March 10, 2026 ip fray article).
• The application of the BSH Hausgeräte v. Electrolux ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a case where non-EU-based defendants rely on an authorized productive representative in the EU was what primarily gave rise to the preliminary reference to the ECJ by the UPC’s Court of Appeal (CoA) a week ago (March 6, 2026 ip fray article). In that article you can find a table that shows what the four questions referred for a preliminary ruling have in common and what sets them apart from each other.