UPC throws out Samsung’s FRAND counterclaim against ZTE as duplicative of German proceeding; Samsung is saved by added matter (for now)

Context:

• In its dispute with ZTE, Samsung has set a record for scattershot FRAND (fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory licensing) litigation, both in terms of the number of (counter)claims brought and the ones thrown out:
  • Its FRAND breach complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California was dismissed (February 11, 2026 ip fray article). Samsung let a deadline for an amendment slip (March 19, 2026 ip fray article) and subsequently confirmed to the court that it was fine with a dismissal without prejudice.
  • The Frankfurt Regional Court did not hold ZTE in breach of FRAND, but found that the licensing terms on which Samsung was seeking a court-ordered license were not sufficiently favorable to ZTE (February 25, 2026 ip fray article).
  • We will get to Samsung’s FRAND counterclaim in the Unified Patent Court (UPC) (June 20, 2025 ip fray article) in a moment.
  • Samsung also filed an action in the UK, a country with which ZTE has no particular connection and where ZTE became the first standard-essential patent (SEP) holder to win an interim-license appeal (October 31, 2025 ip fray article).
  • Samsung also brought, but withdrew, a complaint with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (October 16, 2025 ip fray article).
• Contrary to Samsung prevailing on a FRAND defense, so did ZTE:
  • Another negative FRAND first for Samsung came down when the Munich I Regional Court denied Samsung an injunction for failure to overcome ZTE’s FRAND defense (March 26, 2026 ip fray article).
  • Samsung’s own FRAND defense failed to convince a Brazilian appeals court, which declined to give Samsung “a free pass to infringe” (February 4, 2026 ip fray article).
• In jurisdictions that are not quite as fast as Brazil, ZTE has not obtained an injunction against Samsung yet. The Munich I Regional Court held a trial earlier this year (February 14, 2026 ip fray article) and scheduled the decision for April 15, 2026. That was two weeks ago, and the case was stayed pending parallel validity proceedings.
• The UPC’s Mannheim Local Division (LD) had scheduled both a Samsung v. ZTE and a ZTE v. Samsung hearing for March 17-19, 2026. We analyzed pre-hearing orders and found that Samsung’s case was “dead in the water” while ZTE was “in good “mostly in good shape […], but there [wa]s at least one significant hurdle,” which we identified as added matter: “There could be a bit of a ‘squeeze’ here not between infringement and prior art, but infringement and added matter.” By contrast, we have taken a strong position, also on the basis of a pre-hearing agenda-setting order, on the prospects of InterDigital obtaining an injunction against Disney next week (April 24, 2026 ip fray article).

What’s new: Today the UPC’s Mannheim LD has handed down its decision on the ZTE case heard last month. Added matter indeed disposed of the case. The court still had to decide how to deal with Samsung’s FRAND counterclaim, given that a counterclaim (unlike a defense) requires a decision regardless of the fate of the main claim. Based on the Brussels Regulation, the Mannheim LD declined to accept jurisdiction over the FRAND counterclaim given that Samsung had filed its FRAND action in Frankfurt, Germany (thus a UPC contracting member state (CMS)) prior to its UPC counterclaim.

Direct impact: An appeal by ZTE of the revocation decision would take about a year to be resolved. If the UPC’s Court of Appeal (CoA) reversed on revocation, it would almost certainly proceed to the infringement analysis and likely enter an injunction. Samsung can cross-appeal the dismissal of the FRAND counterclaim.

Wider ramifications:

• Even if the basis was procedural, it means that yet another FRAND (counter)claim by Samsung against ZTE has gone nowhere. It is, so far, a 100% loss rate. It calls into question the wisdom of bringing overlapping claims.
• The next UPC case could result in an injunction, and theoretically it could even be a provisional measures (preliminary injunction (PI)) case. But long before anything would happen in the UPC, the next ZTE-Samsung cases will go to trial in Munich tomorrow (April 30, 2026).
• Today’s decision reaffims that the Mannheim LD is, in principle, prepared to entertain FRAND counterclaims, and provides important clarifications on how the UPC deals with non-technical counterclaims when those overlap with proceedings in national courts of UPC CMS.
• There are now two different standards for “the same party” in the UPC: a narrow and formalistic one when an entity from a corporate group that is not being sued for infringement brings a revocation counterclaim, and a broad and functional one under the Brussels Regulation.