Cameron IP’s Experience Before The Unified Patent Court
Top 10 Key Learnings From Our Experience
Our patent attorneys are all registered UPC representatives, and indeed we are one of a small number of UK and European attorney firms having real life experience handling multiple cases before the European Unified Patent Court (UPC).
There are several key learnings from this experience that we would like our clients and associates to benefit from when understanding how the UPC forum is progressing – and also in weighing up the attractiveness of the UPC as a litigation forum.
See our Top 10 Key Learnings below:
1. The UPC is proving itself to be a relatively popular jurisdiction and is becoming the international venue of choice for some patentees. Over 250 infringement and revocation actions were filed within its first year.
2. The UPC prides itself on being a very quick first-instance litigation court. It aims for, and typically achieves a turnaround time of 12-18 months from lodging an action to issuance of the final decision. This is generally seen as a positive feature of the UPC. However, representatives and clients should bear in mind the relatively short turnaround times which therefore must be adhered to for the various rounds of correspondence.
3. The UPC is a relatively less expensive jurisdiction than most due to the efficient nature of the forum and the relatively shorter timescales involved.
4. The UPC procedures and approach are quite similar in many ways to the EPO opposition procedures and approach. This provides a high degree of certainty to UK and European patent attorney firms who have a lot of opposition experience such as Cameron IP, in what is otherwise a relatively new forum.
5. The UPC’s case management software is poor at the time of writing, and indeed this has been a significant challenge to early efficient use of the court as a litigation forum. These issues have been widely reported and publicised and the UPC is aware of the need to improve. Indeed, at the time of writing, the UPC is in the process of rolling out a significant upgrade which will resolve the issue.
6. The general consensus among practitioners regarding the UPC is that it is a very good forum for litigation which offers quality judgements that are neither especially “patentee friendly or unfriendly” and which handles a wide variety of cases ranging from infringement, revocation, provisional measures, orders for inspection, action for damages, declarations of non-infringement etc.
7. The UPC leans favourably towards granting preliminary injunctions relative to other forums and this may be an attractive feature of the UPC relative to some other jurisdictions.
8. The fear of central revocation actions at the UPC, particularly in certain technological sectors, has been realised to some extent with central revocation claims at the UPC not uncommon.
9. The overall cost and efficiency savings of the UPC as a forum are at risk if an appeal is filed – appeals at the Court of Appeal are neither fast or inexpensive.
10. UPC actions can and often do proceed in parallel with EPO oppositions – this requires a co-ordinated and tactical approach, especially for multinational litigants.
Visit our UPC Hub
For a recap on key aspects of the new UPC system more generally, please visit our UPC Hub here.
Contact Our UPC Team
Stewart Cameron, Director, UPC Representative, European & UK Patent Attorney
T. +44 (0)208 390 3775 (London)
E. stewart@cameronintellectualproperty.com
Stuart Forrest, Director, UPC Representative, European & UK Patent Attorney
T. +44 (0)208 390 3775 (London)
E. stuart.f@cameronintellectualproperty.com
Steven McIlroy, Director, UPC Representative, European & UK Patent Attorney
T. +44 (0)208 390 3775 (London)
E. steven@cameronintellectualproperty.com
Louise Carr, Senior Patent Attorney, UPC Representative, European & UK Patent Attorney
T. +44 (0)208 390 3775 (London)
E. louise@cameronintellectualproperty.com
Categories: Patents