Latest News
December 2023: The launch of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Unitary Patent has been postponed by two months. The reason for this is that the preparations for the case management system have not yet been completed. The start of the sunrise period is expected for the beginning of March and the start of the new jurisdiction for the beginning of June.
October 2023: The Administrative Committee has designated 34 legally and 51 technically qualified persons (including 27 persons from Germany) as judges. Among the designated judges are well-known persons, such as Klaus Grabinski from the Federal Court of Justice, Matthias Zigann from the Higher Regional Court Munich, Ulrike Voß from the Regional Court Düsseldorf.
Expected Start of the UPC
June 2023
Important Dates
January 18, 2022: Ratification of the Protocol on Provisional Application by Austria as the 13th EU Member State.
Ongoing since January 19, 2022: Provisional application phase for assuring proper functioning of the Unified Patent Court.
March 2023: Start of the 3-month sunrise period to opt out of existing bundle patents
June 2023: Start of the Unified Court and official availability of the Unitary Patent
End of 2029: End of the phase of parallel availability of the bundle patent and unitary patent for the participating EU member states
EU states that have already ratified
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden
EU states whose ratification is still pending
Greece, Ireland, Croatia, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic and Cyprus have already signed the UPC Agreement, but have not yet ratified it.
Poland, Spain and Hungary have initially expressed no interest in the UPC and the unitary patent, but may still ratify the UPC Agreement later.
More information
We recommend the other articles in our blog:
– on the Unified Patent Court in detail;
– on the opting-out, the establishment of the UPC and the Sunrise period;
– on the legal basis of the UPC and the unitary patent;
– on the benefits of a unitary European patent protection.
Autor: Dr. Martin Kuschel
