A Guide to the UPC and the UP
The opening of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) on 1 June 2023 may be the most significant development in patent law internationally in the last 50 years. The UPC is an entirely new and truly multinational court with jurisdiction over disputes concerning most European patents in 17 EU Member States, covering a population of around 400 million.
Following the opening of the UPC, “Unitary Patents” i.e. European patents with unitary effect throughout the 17 Contracting EU Member States, will become available from the European Patent Office.
The UPC is important for EU Law as it’s the first time that EU Member States have completely ceded national jurisdiction over a legal process that relates to national rights, and the first time that a new multinational, and in a sense truly Federal, court has been established to deal with EU rights having unitary effect.
We have been thinking at length about how the new system will operate in practice. This book captures that thinking. Inevitably, as the UPC had not started operating when we wrote it, some of our views may be proven wrong, but we expect that most will be accurate. Either way, we believe that this book will be valuable in assisting people to navigate the practice and procedure of the UPC. As we learn more about how the UPC works in practice, we intend to update the book in the very near future.
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