January 16, 2023 Cost of patenting in European Union will be cut dows; Unified Patent Court takes up its action

Seventeen member states of the European Union are beginning to acknowledge unitary patent protection. It will become possible to have patents issued by the European Patent Office under unitary protection by requesting this from the European Patent Office within one month from date of grant of the patent. The system will commence according to the current standing on June 1, 2023. As of January 1, 2023, European Patent Office offers the possibility to register patents under unitary protection when responding to a communication of intended patent grant. Upon filing such a request, the grant of patent will be postponed until June 2023. It will be required to attend to payment of a single maintenance fee. No further translations to national languages nor other validation actions will be required as far as a translation of the patent will be supplied in one official language of the European Union in addition to the language of the patent grant. In many cases, these changes will reduce patenting cost considerably and enable a geographically larger patent protection with reasonable cost.

One of the novelties associated with the unitary protection is also Unified Patent Court which is about to take up its action June 1, 2023. After this, the Unified Patent Court will have jurisdiction over not only the European patents that will be issued but also over the patents so far, regarding their validity and infringement, among some other things. Initially, the patent proprietors can register in a register of the Unified Patent Court that the Court will not have jurisdiction (so called opt out), in which case the national courts will remain having jurisdiction. The current standing of things is that such requests can be presented starting March 1, 2023. In our judgement, it must be decided on a case-by-case basis whether it is a good idea to present such a request or not.

In future, Genip Oy offers services for registering unitary protection and opt out -requests, but also before the Unified Patent Court regarding infringement and invalidation of patents. We will inform about this in more detail later.

If you have any questions, we are happy to advise you.