The Unified Patent Court: What Pharma Companies Need to Know

• Date: 01 September 2022
• Author: Dominic E. Adair

Published in Landslide, Volume 15, Number 1, 2022. © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion

thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the

American Bar Association.

25

The Unified

Patent Court

What Pharma Companies

Need to Know

By Dominic E. Adair

Europe is on the cusp of one of the most signicant develop-

ments in patent law practice since the European Patent Ofce

(EPO) was established under the 1973 European Patent

Convention (EPC).1 The EPC is a multilateral treaty that estab-

lished a common system for the grant of patents in Europe, greatly

simplifying the prosecution process by using the EPO as a single

ofce to grant a bundle of patents for countries of the applicant’s

choosing via the examination of a single application. Europe now

stands on the threshold of another common system established

under a multilateral treaty. This time, the subject matter is not

prosecution but litigation. The Unied Patent Court Agreement

(UPCA),2 signed in 2013, provides for a single court, the Unied

Patent Court (UPC), having the power to determine disputes on the

validity and infringement of patents for all participating countries.

Naturally, with pharmaceuticals being one of the most hard-fought

areas within patent litigation, pharma companies are gearing up

to deal with the new system. This article covers the essentials of

what pharma companies need to know.

What Is the UPC?

The Unied Patent Court is a third system in Europe for resolv-

ing patent disputes. Europe already has two systems: (1) national

litigation systems, within which infringement and validity can be

determined on a country-by-country basis; and (2) the EPO system,

within which post-grant oppositions can determine the validity of

all country patents within the bundle granted by the EPO. Uniquely,

the UPC is the rst system within which both infringement and

validity can be resolved in one case for multiple countries.

Published in Landslide, Volume 15, Number 1, 2022. © 2022 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion

thereof may not be copied or disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the

American Bar Association.

25