A look at the Unified Patent Court's first year of operation and what lies ahead

Charlotte Garnitsch, partner at Taylor Wessing's Eindhoven office, comments: "An integrated court system which provides for injunctive relief in a territory of over 300 million people covering 17 countries in Europe by initiating only one case is very appealing."  

Amanda Ebbutt, partner at Taylor Wessing's London office, comments: "This is more cases than expected, given many patentees elected to opt out their patent portfolios from the system prior to the UPC opening. We have seen a number of innovation driven companies experienced in asserting their patents chose to litigate in this forum which has been a vote of confidence in the system."

Phillip Rektorschek, partner at Taylor Wessing's Munich office, comments: "Considering there are still only very few decisions showing how the court will deal with the cases, this number looks about right. And I would expect this number to further increase and double until the end of 2024."

Phillip Rektorschek, partner at Taylor Wessing's Munich office, comments: "Germany was (and is) the jurisdiction with most cases on a national level where almost 70% of the European cases are lodged before German courts, thus it is not really surprising that this applies similarly to the UPC. However, I think the Dutch and French divisions will also pick up more cases."

Thomas Adocker, partner at Taylor Wessing's Vienna office, comments: "The main reason why local divisions in smaller countries handle less cases as compared to others like Germany is because in the bigger countries two out of three legal judges are known beforehand, but in the smaller countries only one of three are known (and the other two are allocated from the pool of judges). This makes many potential plaintiffs think that a decision of divisions where two out of three judges are known beforehand are more predictable."

Charlotte Garnitsch, partner at Taylor Wessing's Eindhoven office, comments: "As divisions build up expertise within specific technical fields, we believe that parties will bring their cases to those divisions where they expect the best result for their case. As such, we expect that the Hague will certainly pick up the pace in the coming year, but the real growth will in our view come if the ‘traditional’ small molecules and biotech pharma companies start using the system. The expertise of the Dutch judges in this field is second to none, which could be very appealing to originator companies to file in the local division in the Hague."

Amanda Ebbutt, partner at Taylor Wessing's London office, comments: "If available, we expect an Irish Local Division to be of interest to parties when considering where to file cases given its common law background and particular experience in pharmaceutical cases. Our UK practice at Taylor Wessing already forms part of our integrated European UPC team for clients, so we would not expect the introduction of an Irish Local Division to change how we work on a day-to-day basis as a co-ordinated pan-European team."

Eoin Martyn, partner at Taylor Wessing's Dublin office, comments: "Although the Irish government continues to believe that joining the UPC is essential and is committed to participating in the UPC, it deferred the date for the referendum on the ratification of the agreement on the UPC which was due to be held on 7 June 2024. If the referendum is carried, the government has signalled its intention to establish a local division of the UPC in Ireland. Assuming Ireland has a local division, it may become a sought-after division for patent holders that favour a common law system, especially US-based patent holders and their legal advisors for whom the opportunity also to hold proceedings in English may be a further advantage. Being able to litigate on a pan-European basis before a court with native English proficiency and common law experience could very well be attractive for those parties as well as their legal advisors, particularly for those from countries with their own common law traditions like the US and UK."