On 8 September 2026, the Munich Local Division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a ruling in a patent infringement dispute involving digital audiovisual processing equipment that further clarifies how security may be set when EPO opposition proceedings run in parallel with a UPC preliminary injunction (PI) action. The approach reflected in the decision is that the court may look beyond the claimant’s solvency and the defendant’s potential loss, and factor the patent’s vulnerability in the parallel opposition into the amount of security required. Where detailed prior-art material points to a high risk of revocation, the security needed to maintain interim relief may rise materially in order to protect the defendant against losses if the injunction is later lifted.
The practical effect is to bring patent-validity risk forward into the interim-relief stage. A patentee seeking a PI may need not only a strong urgency and infringement case, but also a more robust validity record and a realistic assessment of the cash cost of higher security. For defendants, well-developed prior-art and EPO opposition submissions may influence both whether interim relief is granted and the financial conditions attached to it. Security should still be understood as a risk-allocation device rather than a standalone penalty, but where the parallel validity challenge appears unusually strong, the UPC is signalling greater caution before allowing one side to obtain a potentially market-shaping cross-border injunction ahead of a final validity determination.
