Patent Litigation in Poland: 6 Essential Facts for 2026

Suing on a patent in Poland is not like suing in Germany, and it is nothing like the Unified Patent Court. Patent litigation in Poland is funnelled into a single specialised court in Warsaw, yet the question of whether the patent is even valid is answered by a different body on a different track. Get that split wrong and you can win an infringement trial while your patent quietly dies at the Patent Office, or sink months into the wrong forum. This guide lays out the six facts that decide how a Polish patent case is fought and won in 2026.

Patent Litigation in Poland: Where Cases Are Heard

Since 1 July 2020, Poland has run intellectual-property disputes through specialised IP divisions inside five regional courts — Warsaw, Poznań, Gdańsk, Lublin and Katowice. For most IP claims a rights holder can choose among them. Patents are the exception.

For technically complex rights, jurisdiction is concentrated. Exclusive first-instance jurisdiction over patents, supplementary protection certificates, utility models, topographies and computer-implemented inventions sits with the Regional Court in Warsaw and its XXII IP Division, designated the country’s “technical court.” Appeals go to the Warsaw Court of Appeal.

The practical takeaway is simple: whatever city your infringer operates from, a patent infringement suit is filed in Warsaw. Concentrating patent litigation in Poland in one specialised forum was meant to build judicial expertise, and in practice it has made outcomes more predictable than the pre-2020 patchwork.

Representation by a Polish advocate (adwokat), legal counsel (radca prawny) or patent attorney (rzecznik patentowy) is mandatory in these proceedings, so local counsel is not optional.

The Bifurcated System: Infringement vs. Validity

This is the single most important feature of the Polish system, and it catches foreign litigants out constantly. Poland is bifurcated: the court hears infringement, but it does not rule on whether the patent is valid.

Validity is decided administratively by the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland (UPRP). A party wanting the patent gone files an invalidation application there; the Office examines it and issues a decision. That decision can be appealed to the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw within 30 days, and onward to the Supreme Administrative Court — but those courts review only the legality of the Office’s decision, not the technical merits afresh.

So an infringement case and an invalidity attack travel on two separate tracks, each with its own timetable. For a patent owner, that can be an advantage: the accused party cannot simply ask the trial judge to strike the patent down, and the infringement case is not automatically frozen by a validity challenge. For an accused infringer, it means the real fight over the patent’s survival happens at the UPRP — and it must be built on rigorous prior art from day one. The mechanics of that search are the same ones we cover in our guide to the patent invalidity search.

Preliminary Injunctions After the 2023 Reforms

The preliminary injunction (PI) used to be Poland’s sharpest tool for patentees. Amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure that took effect in 2023 deliberately blunted it, rebalancing the system toward defendants.

Under the current rules, a court weighing interim relief in an IP case must now:

• Assess the likelihood that the patent is valid — not just infringement — and take account of any pending or already-decided invalidation proceedings before granting a PI.
• Respect a time bar: as a rule, an application for interim relief must be filed within six months of the date the rights holder learned of the infringement.
• Give the defendant a voice: courts far more often hear the other side before granting relief, so the old ex parte surprise injunction is much rarer.

The upshot is that speed still matters — miss the six-month window and you may lose the interim route entirely — but a credible validity position is now part of the price of admission for any PI.

Remedies You Can Win

A successful patentee in Poland can obtain a familiar set of remedies, grounded in the Industrial Property Law and shaped by the EU Enforcement Directive:

• A permanent injunction stopping the infringing acts.
• Monetary relief — either damages on general principles or, at the holder’s election, a lump sum equivalent to a reasonable royalty.
• Surrender of wrongful profits obtained by the infringer.
• Recall, removal from the market or destruction of infringing goods and the means used to make them.
• Publication of the judgment at the infringer’s cost.

Poland also offers pre-action tools — requests to secure evidence, to inspect goods or premises, and to order disclosure of information about the origin and distribution networks of infringing products — which can be decisive in building a quantum case before the main trial.

How a Polish Patent Case Unfolds

A typical enforcement path looks like this, though every matter has its own wrinkles:

1. Pre-action work: confirm infringement, map validity exposure, and gather evidence — often via a motion to secure evidence or an inspection order.
2. Cease-and-desist: a demand letter can resolve clear cases and sets up the record on knowledge and willfulness.
3. Interim relief: if the facts are strong and fresh, apply for a preliminary injunction — remembering the six-month clock and the validity test.
4. Main infringement action at the Regional Court in Warsaw.
5. Parallel invalidation at the UPRP if the defendant attacks the patent — the two proceedings run independently.
6. Appeal to the Warsaw Court of Appeal on infringement, and through the administrative courts on validity.

Because infringement and validity run separately, sequencing and coordination between the court case and the Patent Office proceeding is where experienced counsel earns its fee. Our litigation-search teams support that evidence work on the ground in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław.

Poland, the EPC and the UPC

Jurisdiction mistakes start with the acronyms, so be precise. Poland has been a member of the European Patent Convention since 2004, so you can obtain protection by validating a European patent in Poland. But Poland never joined the Unified Patent Court, and there is no Polish UPC division.

That means a European patent validated in Poland is enforced exactly like a national Polish patent — in the Warsaw court described above — and you cannot get unitary-patent effect covering Poland. Note one 2026 wrinkle: the UPC has begun asserting long-arm jurisdiction over defendants domiciled in UPC member states even for infringements touching non-UPC countries, so a Polish-market dispute can occasionally surface before the UPC through a foreign defendant. For planning purposes, though, treat Polish patent enforcement as a national matter. The EPO’s national law resource sets out the validation particulars.

If you are still at the filing stage, our companion guide on how to file a patent in Poland walks through the national, European and PCT routes that feed into the enforcement system here.

Enforce or Defend a Patent in Poland With PerspireIP

Whether you are asserting a patent or defending against one, patent litigation in Poland is won on the quality of the prior-art and infringement evidence behind it. PerspireIP builds that evidence base — invalidity searches, claim charts and freedom-to-operate analysis — for counsel across the country. Explore our Poland IP services hub or talk to our team about your case.

Frequently Asked Questions