Unified Patent Court (UPC)

1 June 2023 marks a momentous day in the landscape of European Patents. On that day, after many, many years of discussion, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will come into effect, covering 17 member states of the European Union.  

In the lead up to this, it has been possible to optout existing granted European Patents from the competence of the UPC, in the 3 month “sunrise period” before the Court goes live. This requires working with the electronic Case Management System (CMS) of the UPC, and it is not an under-estimation to say this has been somewhat challenging for the Professional Representatives and their support staff, who have to use the system. Initial estimates were that around 50,000 patents would be opted out during the 3 month sunrise period. This has proven to be a significant underestimation, with currently around 330,000 granted patents having been opted out (note this number is based on the case references we are getting from the CMS). With several days of the sunrise period still to run, this number will only increase. In our opinion, the CMS has not worked as well as it could have, with frequent offline periods, and at times being incredibly slow to function, as well as occasionally freezing whilst an opt request is being filed.  

Nevertheless, we are very pleased to report that we have completed all of the opt-outs as instructed for our clients, well before the end of the sunrise period, and that we have robust processes in place for opt out requests for cases that grant after 1 June 2023.  

Please do get in touch with Tony Wray, Pippa Tolfts or Mandy Hunt if we can help you with opting out any of your cases from the UPC.