Context: With all that is going on in the Amazon-InterDigital “antisuit war” involving the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the High Court of Justice for England & Wales (EWHC), a summary of the procedural history would be exceedingly long. We refer you to February 6, 2026 ip fray article on an order by the UPC Mannheim Local Division (LD) following last week’s EWHC hearing.
What’s new: Late on Wednesday (February 11, 2026), the UPC’s Mannheim LD, with the support of all three judges on the panel, entered an order that clarifies the scope of what antisuit and FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing) relief may seek in the UK and where the UPC draws the line. The warning comes on the eve of another London hearing. The order also contradicts in no uncertain terms the way Mr Justice Richard Meade of the EWHC described a critical sequence of events. The question of which case was first-filed and which order was entered earlier may be given significant weight in antisuit conflicts.
Direct impact: Amazon will now have to tread carefully. It will have to withdraw (or defang) its UK antisuit injunction request or risk a €50M fine, and potentially even greater escalation should the EWHC take coercive measures against InterDigital. Below you can find the order as well as an explanation of the sequence of events and the most critical issue: damages. The next UPC deadline, which can be extended, is February 25, 2026. Thereafter, the sanctions hammer could come down quickly. In this dispute, there could be dueling sanctions and other unpleasant events.
Wider ramifications:
- The UK-UPC conflict is on the brink of escalation, which the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Trade is watching with great concern (February 3, 2026 ip fray article). The fact that the UK courts even usurp global jurisdiction over licenses covering (at least in part) patents that are undisputedly not standard-essential further exacerbates the situation and could lead to a major embarrassment for the UK in the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is arguably the most reckless attack on foreign intellectual property by a WTO member in history, and the Trump Administration, which has already expressed concerns as well, will not sit by idly in the event of WTO proceedings.
- Ultimately, the UK will lose. The question is not whether it will have to back down, but when, just like the UK’s antitrust regulator, which also went off the deep end in 2023 in a Big Tech context, learned its lesson and now contents itself with unenforceable statements by the likes of Apple and Google in order to de-escalate. The UK is simply not powerful enough to get away with overreach.
- InterDigital launched new multijurisdictional enforcement campaigns against allegedly unwilling licensees Hisense and TCL (February 10, 2026 ip fray article).
- There is also a potential conflict between the EWHC and the Munich I Regional Court, but for a couple of reasons the Munich court is presently not actively involved. That could, however, change, and if it changed, some Amazon executive would face the risk of imprisonment.
- Post-BSH UK injunctions now regularly (and, under EU law, legitimately) come out of the UPC and German courts (at least Munich), which may further frustrate the UK judiciary and complicate the quest for a constructive solution.
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UPC panels and counsel
CoA
Presiding Judge Ulrike Voss (“Voß” in German) was recently sworn in as the Presiding Judge of the CoA’s new Panel 3. But for this case she is joined by President Dr. Grabinski’s trusted sidekicks Judge-rapporteur Prof. Peter Blok and Judge Emmanuel Gougé (Panel 1). Presiding Judge Voss is famous in the SEP context for her referral of Huawei v. ZTE to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) while she was presiding over one of the divisions of the Dusseldorf Regional Court. For the Munich LD, she granted Nokia an anti-antisuit injunction against SUNMI (February 20, 2025 ip fray article).
Mannheim LD panel
Presiding Judge (and here, judge-rapporteur) Prof. Peter Tochtermann, Judge Dirk Boettcher (“Böttcher” in German), and Judge András Kupecz (CD Munich; August 30, 2024 ip fray interview). The latest order was signed by Presiding Judge Prof. Tochtermann “with “after consultation with and upon mandate of the full panel (Judge Sender substituting for Judge Böttcher being on leave)” (emphasis in original). Judge Tobias Sender was in the audience during the first part of the November 14, 2025 hearing in this matter.
Counsel for InterDigital
Counsel for InterDigital: Arnold Ruess‘s Cordula Schumacher (also lead counsel on appeal), Dr. Lisa Rieth, Tim Smentkowski, Julija Kravtsova, and Dr. Marina Wehler. From the UK, Bird & Bird’s Mark Livsey attended the Mannheim LD hearing in person. U.S. attorney Richard Kamprath of McKool Smith was also among the remote attendees. In-house litigation counsel Steven Akerley attended in person, and several other InterDigital lawyers and executives followed the video stream.
Counsel for Amazon
- In person at the Mannheim hearing: Hoyng Rokh Monegier’s Klaus Haft, Sven Krause, Roeland Grijpink, Dr. Léon Dijkman, Moritz Lohr, Dr. Nico Schur, and Antonia Wilhelm; as well as (from the UK) Hogan Lovells’s Paul Brown.
- By video: Hoyng Rokh Monegier’s Kay Kasper; Hogan Lovells UK’s Will Buswell and Ian Moss; Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton’s Martin Bader and Stephen Korniczky; and Amazon VP IP Scott Hayden and Associate General Counsel IP Marc Ascolese.
- That six-month term is meant to correspond to the period during which an interim-license declaration would be effect until a post-trial decision. In practice, it may be longer than that, but the key thing is that it’s about months (maybe many months), not years. ↩︎
- The six-year term is again not a precise duration, but comparable to the term of a long-term patent license agreement. ↩︎
- For the avoidance of doubt, the long-term license period follows the interim-license period, and seamlessly so. ↩︎