2026-01-15 - LD Brussels - Establishment Labs v. GC Aesthetics et al. - UPC-CFI-0001357/2025

ENGLISH: 1. As the Court is bound to the wording of the actual requests articulated by the defendants in the substantive part of their Preliminary Objection, the Court holds (in application of Rule 19.7 RoP and Art. 26(1) Regulation EU 1215/2012), that the absence of an objection from the defendants domiciled in the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Spain and the United Kingdom requesting that one or more of the individual named defendants were unrightfully sued before the UPC (and the LD Brussels), should be treated as a submission to the UPC's international jurisdiction and the LD Brussels' territorial competence to hear the case against them. 2. The UPC has jurisdiction to decide on infringement of all parts of a European patent, including those in non-UPC states such as the Republic of Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Norway, provided that one of the defendants is rightfully sued before the UPC. As the defendants did not oppose the UPC's international jurisdiction, the UPC is competent to hear the case with regard to an infringement to any of the national designations of the patent at issue. 3. As the defendants have made no indication of national validity proceedings (cf. argumentation based on Art. 24(4) Regulation EU 1215/2012) in the Republic of Ireland, Spain, Norway, Switzerland or the United Kingdom, the Court sees no reason why such exclusive jurisdiction would prevent it from assessing the alleged infringement relating to the respective national validations of the patent at issue. 4. The assessment of whether, and if so by which specific acts, the defendants (together or individually) have allegedly infringed the Irish, Spanish, Norwegian, Swiss and UK designations of the patent at issue and which law should be applied to assess such infringement, forms part of the merits assessment and is not relevant to a R. 19 RoP objection. 5. There is no basis in R. 19 RoP indicating that the assessment of costs related to the R. 19 RoP objection should be made separately from the assessment based on R. 150 and 152 RoP. Consequently, the costs and the party to whom they should be awarded will be determined at the end of the proceedings on the merits.

Brussels LD dismissed preliminary objection challenging UPC jurisdiction over non-UPC state designations (Ireland, Spain, Norway, Switzerland, UK). Defendants who failed to object to UPC jurisdiction are deemed to have submitted. Territorial scope of relief is a merits question, not R. 19.