A German court has established a new legal precedent for how quickly companies can file injunctions under utility models derived from Unitary Patents. The ruling, delivered by the Regional Court Munich on 10 September 2026, may prevent Taiwanese manufacturer OsmaR and its Chinese affiliate Lian Yang from selling magnetic buckles in Germany. This decision clarifies a key procedural rule that may alter how patent holders pursue preliminary relief in national courts.
The dispute revolves around utility model DE 20 2018 007 054, owned by Wonderland Switzerland—a division of the global baby products company. The model protects a magnetic closure system combining a mechanical latch with magnetic retention, used in baby carriers and similar products. The court determined that OsmaR’s and Lian Yang’s buckles directly violate the utility model, upholding a preliminary injunction requested by Wonderland.
The defendants have already filed an appeal to the Higher Regional Court Munich (case ID: 6 U 2780/26 e), while separate proceedings are ongoing at the Unified Patent Court (UPC). However, the broader legal significance lies in the court’s interpretation of the one-month urgency period for filing preliminary injunctions when a utility model stems from a Unitary Patent.
How the utility model was filed
The utility model originated from a European patent application that later became Unitary Patent EP 3 957 204, granted on 22 July 2026. Wonderland submitted the utility model just five days after the patent’s grant and registered it on 4 August 2026. The preliminary injunction application reached the court on 2 September 2026—within the standard one-month window for such actions.
Yet the Munich judges ruled that in this scenario, the utility model’s registration itself triggers a new one-month urgency period. This creates what the court termed a “double one-month deadline”: the first month runs from the Unitary Patent’s grant to the utility model’s branching-off, and the second begins upon the utility model’s registration. The court justified this by noting that Unitary Patents cannot be used to seek preliminary relief in national courts, only the UPC handles such cases for unitary rights.
This means patent holders may file a parallel utility model within one month of a Unitary Patent’s grant, then have another month from the utility model’s registration to seek a German injunction. The court noted that this approach serves a practical purpose: allowing patent holders to obtain geographically limited relief in Germany when the broader Unitary Patent system does not provide it.
Court clarifies urgency deadlines for injunctions
The ruling distinguishes this case from the general rule, where utility models can be branched off up to ten years after a patent application, and the court expressed doubts about whether such delayed branching would qualify as a valid trigger for a new urgency period.
The court also rejected the defendants’ attempts to invalidate the utility model. OsmaR and Lian Yang argued that prior art, including a 2007 international patent application and a 2015 US patent, proved the invention lacked novelty or was obvious. However, the judges found neither reference disclosed the magnetic component as a separate element from the male closure part, nor provided justification for a skilled person to incorporate magnets into the design.
Wonderland’s legal team, led by Jan Phillip Rektorschek at Pentarc, relied on established case law, including the Court of Justice of the European Union’s ruling in Phoenix Contact v Harting, which grants a presumption of validity to European patents. The Munich court extended this reasoning to utility models derived from identical-claim patent applications.
