UPC Agreement (European Patent) : soon time for legislators and undertakings to take decisions

The UPC Agreement is a convention concluded between 25 Member States and which installs a unified patent court. With two regulations adopted by the European Union on 17 December 2012 (the regulations No. 1257/2012 and 1260/2012), this Agreement puts in place a patent which grants unified protection on European level, as well as a common Court which shall have jurisdiction over procedures regarding such patents.

The patent with unitary effect provides its proprietor a unified patent protection in all the Member States participating in the system. The revocation of such patent will also have effect on that whole territory. The primary objective of the new system is to provide the patent holder protection in each of the 25 Member States by means of a single procedure and without the obligation to translate the patent in all national languages.

However, the UPC Agreement does not only concern the patents with unitary effect, as the protection applies as well to ordinary European patents. Moreover, the unified Court shall have jurisdiction over these same ordinary European patents and the applicable law shall be the one contained in the UPC Agreement. During a transitional period, however, undertakings shall have the possibility to choose whether or not being placed under the unified system for the patents of their choice (possibility to "opt-out").
The concrete implementation of this project shall require at least 13 Member States (of which Germany, England and France) to ratify the UPC Agreement. This being said, companies shall have to evaluate and prepare, from this moment on, certain strategic choices (in particular the question of opt-out). In general, undertakings have to understand the exact scope of this new context in which they shall have to defend their activities and markets, regardless of the fact that they hold patents or not.

The present note shall begin with a summary of the current situation and texts. It shall afterwards clarify the importance of the choices to be made.

More information by reading our full note (click here)