Patents in Europe have been and still are available through either national patent offices or the European Patent Office (EPO).
The national patent offices examine applications under rules set out in their national law. If granted, an application results in a national patent.
The EPO examines applications under the rules set out in the European Patent Convention (EPC). There are 39 contracting states to the EPC (including all EU member states, the UK, and others). If granted, the patentee then decides in which of the 39 contracting states they wish to validate it.
Each patent granted by the EPO, a ‘European patent’, therefore resulted in a bundle of what are in effect national rights. Before the UPC, these, like nationally granted patents, had to be enforced through the national courts of the countries in which they have been validated.
There was already some scope for national courts to grant relief for more than one country but, within the EU, the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union only permits such pan-national relief in very limited situations. Therefore, international patent disputes in Europe were typically litigated in several countries in parallel.
The UPC means that the European patent can now be litigated centrally, although there may still be a place for national litigation.
