UPC Court Fees

The Administrative Committee of the UPC has issued an updated Table of Court fees with a new fees schedule in force from 1 January 2026. See also the Explanatory Note provided, by the UPC Administrative Committee (AC), with the update of fees. 

Key Changes

The UPC website states that the UPC’s court fees framework has been set up to balance the need for the court to be self-sustaining and to allow for fair access to justice. The fees have increased significantly from 1 January 2026 – the previous fees having been set in 2016 and so a certain amount of the increase is to do with increases in costs in that period, but it also reflects the court's need to support itself adequately and the previously underestimated amounts of time and effort the court needs to put into some of the more preliminary applications which previously had more nominal fees associated with them.

There are fixed fees for infringement actions or counterclaims concerning licenses (eg FRAND defences), counterclaims for infringement, actions of declaration of non-infringement, actions for compensation for licence of right and applications for provisional measures – all at 14,600 € - with applications to preserve evidence (saisie), for an order for inspection and for an order to freeze assets coming in at 5,000 € and applications to determine damage at 4,000 €. 

The value-based fees are charged in addition to fixed fees and are provisionally based on the estimated value of the case put forward by the claimant in the Statement of Claim and are finally decided upon by the court in not agreed. These value-based fees only apply is where  the value of a case is above 500,000 euros. The value-based fees start at € 3,300 for a claim value from € 500,000 to €750,000, going up to €430,300 for a case value of more than € 50,000,000. The estimated value of the case should reflect the objective interest pursued by the claimant at the time of filing the action and must be submitted at the start of the action.  However, there is a costs ceiling that is dictated by the value of the claim – so there is a bit of a squeeze going on! Guidance on the court's assessment of the value has been issued (see the Costs section of our UPC hub here). 

The main changes to the fees in the 2026 revision are stated by the AC to have been made for the following reasons:

1. To amend all court fees to account for inflation since 2016, the fees have been increased by the compound interest rate since then which was calculated to be 32%.
2. “To amend all fees that do not adequately reflect the amount of work in particular with respect to the complexity of certain applications at the Court's end”. The Court of Appeal fixed fees for revocation actions and the value based fees were increased by 10% to account for the work of five judges (as opposed to three at the court of first instance) and fees which had been too low for the workload were increased. 
3. To introduce court fees for those applications that have hitherto not had an associated fee. These include fees for challenging the decision to reject an appeal as inadmissible (Rule 234), applications for suspensive effect (Rule 223), applications to enforce a decision (Rule 354.4), requests for the revocation of an order to preserve evidence (Rule 198.1) and requests for the revocation of provisional measures (Rule 213.1).

Key elements of the UPC's court fees (and recoverable costs) framework

• No fees are charged to opt-out European patents from the jurisdiction of the UPC, nor to withdraw an opt-out.
• Infringement actions and declarations of non-infringement have fixed court fees of 14,600 euros, with revocation actions set at 26,500 euros. There are also fixed fees for counterclaims for infringement, actions for compensation for license of right, application to determine damages, applications for provisional measures, saisie applications, applications for orders of inspection and application for an order to freeze assets – these are all listed now in Schedule I. 
• Additional value-based court fees now apply for all of the fixed fees applications in Schedule I. 
• There are also fixed fees for appeals listed in Schedule V and several other applications listed in schedule III (although these do not attract value-based fees also; and there are fixed fees for appeals to the Court of Appeal too which also attract value-based fees). Full details are available on the fees table here.  
  
  Actions for which an additional value-based fee might be due:
  • Infringement action
  • Counterclaim for infringement
  • Action for declaration of non-infringement
  • Action for compensation for license of right
  • Application to determine damages
  • Application for provisional measures
  • Application to preserve evidence
  • Application for an order for inspection
  • Application for an order to freeze assets 
  • Appeal pursuant to Rule 220.1 (a) and (b) [Rule 228},
  • Interlocutory appeal pursuant to Rule 220.1(c), appeal with leave of the Court of First Instance pursuant to Rule 220.2 or allowance by the Court of Appeal pursuant to Rule 220.4 or appeal of a cost decision with leave of the Court of Appeal pursuant to Rule 221.4 [Rule 228},
  • Application for leave to appeal against cost decision pursuant to Rule 221 [Rule 22.8],
  • Request for discretionary review pursuant to Rule 220.3, [Rule 228],
  • Application for re-establishment of rights [Rule 320.2},
  • Application to review a case management order pursuant to Rule 220.2 [R. 333.3],
  • Application to set aside decision by default pursuant to Rule 357 [Rule 356.2},
  • Application for rehearing pursuant to Rule 245.2 [Rule 250},
  • Challenge a decision to reject an appeal as inadmissible [Rule 234.1},
  • Application for suspensive effect [Rule 223},
  • Appeal against a decision on enforceability [Rule 354.4 ·and 220.2].
     
• These value-based fees are (self) assessed by the claimant (primarily on a licence fee basis) and paid at the same time as the fixed fee. If there is any disagreement over the value assessment this will be resolved at the interim conference. The Table of Court fees document provides general principles and specific suggestions for such assessment for particular actions. The value-based fees range from 0 euros (for actions of value up to and including 500,000 euros) to 430,300 euros (for actions of a value of more than 50 million euros).
• Value is also used to determine the ceiling of recoverable costs of the successful party (from 38,000 euros for proceedings with a value of up to and including 250,000 euros, all the way up to 2 million euros for proceedings with a value of more than 50 million euros). The ceiling may be raised in some instances for particularly complex cases but cannot exceed the maximum of 50 million euros.
• Fees and costs that could "threaten the economic viability" of one or other party may be reimbursed or decreased. See below re SMEs. 
   

Fee reductions and reimbursements

The AC also noted in the Explanatory Note that, to reduce the effect of the amended fees on SME's, "it is further proposed to increase the existing reduction off court fees from 40% to 50% (see sub f. of explanatory note). This has been implemented through a change to Rule 370.8 RoP, which entered into force on 1 January 2026.

The reimbursement scheme relating to withdrawals under Rule 370.9 RoP has been changed. All opportunities for reimbursement have been removed except for the two scenarios, for which the percentage reimbursement has also been amended, as follows: the opportunity for reimbursements in the following two scenarios:: 

•  withdrawals and settlements before the closure of the written procedure: 50% of the court fees will be reimbursed, reduced from 60% in the previous fees scale. 
• settlement or arbitral award issuing from procedures before the PMAC before the closure of the interim procedure or the date specified by the judge rapporteur in the interim conference:  65% of the court fees will be reimbursed, increased from 60% in the previous fees scale.

If the amount of payable court fees threatens the economic existence of a party who is not a natural person, and has presented reasonably available and plausible evidence to support that the amount of Court fees threatens its economic existence, the Court may upon request by that party, wholly or partially reimburse the fixed and value-based fee.

For information about the assessment of the value of an action and costs ceilings see the Costs section of this UPC Hub.

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