Oddfellow 2026/1
Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer…
Bubendorf 3 August 2026
My father was a fan of the late, great Nat “King” Cole, and this was one of his songs. Nat might well have been an outstanding jazz pianist and a wonderfully mellifluous singer, but a large part of Europe would currently regard him as certifiable. It is, in the words of another US great, too darn hot. The other day, I saw 39.4°C on my external thermometer (undoubtedly a couple of degrees too high, but nevertheless). Poor (and very ill-prepared) Paris and some parts of Germany experienced a very real 44 some weeks ago.
And everything is very, very dry. You’ve no doubt seen the news of the fires in France and Spain. Our local canton, Baselland, has instituted a very Australian thing, a total fire ban. This was on the eve of 1 August, Switzerland’s fourth of July, where there are traditionally bonfires and fireworks, both public and private. Even Basel-Stadt, which traditionally has a big fireworks show on a barge in the middle of the Rhine, cancelled. Not, mind you, that the Rhine is its usual self. The level is so low that normal barge traffic is problematic and barges can proceed only with considerably reduced loads. The traditional river cruise ships from The Netherlands to Basel have also been badly affected. One cruise ship on the Danube actually ran aground and the passengers had to be taken off. Poor Swiss cows are feeling it – there have been cases of heat stress among the dairy herds and milk output has fallen considerably. And cows in the high alpine pastures are having to be brought down prematurely because of lack of food, courtesy of the lack of rain. It appears that brown Swiss cows are more resilient than other dairy varieties, so, the answer to “how now, brown cow?” is clearly s’guët!
Of course, the current (permanent?) resident of a large and slightly shopworn property on Pennsylvania Avenue, DC says it’s all a hoax. I wish that hoaxes were not quite this realistic.
StilI on summer-related things, I mentioned previously my problems with the sun and the necessity for further treatment of the skin damage on my head. This took the form of something called photodynamic therapy, where they put a cream on your head, cover it with tinfoil (yes, really) wait for 2 hours and then irradiate for a few minutes.
An old Dulux colleague who had been on the receiving end advised me to take a couple of analgesics a hour prior to the radiation, and I’m glad that I did, because it stung. I emerged from the dermatologist’s looking like someone with a spectacularly bad case of sunburn. But when I went back for my inspection, the dermatologist was very pleased, and he commented that such a strong reaction meant that it had worked well. Follow-up appointment in October.
The UPC celebrated its third birthday in June, and it seems to be going well. Too well in some cases. The German Divisions (Düsseldorf, Munich, Hamburg, Mannheim) are getting the lion’s share of the cases, 70% of the preliminary injunction filings and 76% of the infringement main actions. The Hague and Milan get 10% each and the rest get the remaining 10%. This lopsided arrangement has been the cause of some concern and the consideration of some sort of case reallocation to even things up.
The desire of speedy decisions certainly seems to be working out – preliminary injunctions are delivered in, on average, 112 days, infringement main actions in 16.2 months and standalone revocation proceedings in 14 months.
One developing aspect of the UPC is the extent of long-arm jurisdiction – can the UPC adjudicate on EP patents in EPC contracting states that are not part of the EU (UK, Turkey, Norway) or non-UPC members (Spain. Poland)? This has led to the UPC’s first ever referral of questions of EU law to the CJEU, made on 6 March 2026 by the UPC Court of Appeal in Dyson v Dreame and Eurep.
The UPC has thus far only established long-arm jurisdiction in first instance decisions. This case is the first of the long-arm jurisdiction decisions to come before the Court of Appeal, and it is significant that the Court of Appeal has concluded that the question of the scope if the UPC’s extra-territorial jurisdiction under EU law was sufficiently unclear as to give rise to a referral to the CJEU. It has referred four questions to the CJEU, which may be found here.
In 2025, Dyson applied to the Hamburg Local Division of the UPC for a preliminary injunction against various Dreame entities, including Dreame International’s European Authorised Representative Eurep , all in respect of infringements in UPC territories and non-UPC Spain. Hamburg held that it had jurisdiction over all these Dreame entities in respect of infringements in UPC territories and also in respect of infringements in Spain for all (including Dreame International on the basis of the anchor defendant Eurep). This order was appealed.
The Court of Appeal considered that it should refer questions of jurisdiction of the UPC over the third state (i.e. non-EU/EFTA) defendant Dreame International in respect of infringement in a non-UPC territory (Spain) and also on the liability of a European Authorised Representative for patent infringement and the role of anchor defendants in jurisdiction over third state established defendants.
Interestingly, the CoA decided to bifurcate the case – deciding the UPC territory issues immediately and staying only the parts reliant on CJEU consideration, which fits in very nicely with the UPC philosophy of providing quick decisions. We await the CJEU’s thoughts.
We sometimes watch programmes on the BBC and ITV websites and for these we need to use a VPN. Sometimes the BBC in particular seems to be able to detect a VPN, and we generally seem to be able to get around this by simply restarting the computer. VPNs recently came into the spotlight in a case relating The Diary of Anne Frank, the celebrated journal of a young stateless Jewish girl (born in Germany, but lost German citizenship under the Nazis, as did all Jews) whose family hid in a secret annex in a house in Amsterdam (you can visit it). Eventually betrayed, Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in early 1945. The father was the only family survivor and he came into the possession of the diary. He has occasionally published revised versions. As a result, some of the diary will remain under Dutch copyright until 2037.
However, because there is no overall European copyright law, the work has been in the public domain for some time in many countries, one of these being neighbouring Belgium. A coalition of Dutch and Belgian academics published online a new scholarly version of the diary, which was made freely available in Belgium, but potential Dutch readers were geoblocked from accessing it (the way the BBC does when we try to access it without a VPN). However, if the Dutch reader used a VPN, access was possible.
The Anne Frank Fonds, owner of the Dutch copyright, promptly sued the Belgian publisher for copyright infringement. They argued that, because standard VPNs easily allow users to mask their true IP address and spoof a Belgian location, the scholarly website was effectively communicating the protected work to the Dutch public. In a major victory for digital rights and common sense, the CJEU held that there was no copyright infringement, officially categorising VPNs as “lawful technical tools” while establishing new boundaries for online copyright disputes. So, I can be relaxed that some sort of Internet police isn’t going to break down my door and seize my VPN-equipped computer.