INTRODUCTION Contributed by: Gordon Harris and Vittorio Cerulli Irelli, Trevisan & Cuonzo
Trevisan & Cuonzo Via Brera 6 Milan 20121 Italy Tel: +39 028 646 3313 Email: info@trevisancuonzo.com Web: www.trevisancuonzo.com
Introduction On 1 June 2023, the Unified Patent Court in Europe opened its doors for the first time. In doing so it became the first multinational juris - diction in the world to deal with private rights. At a stroke it transformed the patent law architec - ture in Europe and created the opportunity for transnational injunctions and damages awards. It was the product of years of development and negotiations across Europe. The Court’s rules were only finalised on the 19th draft and involved a great deal of bartering and compromise. How - ever, the end result is a holistic system of litiga - tion with first instance courts around Europe all operating under the same rules of procedure, and a Court of Appeal based in Luxembourg to bring together the decisions and create a con - sistent jurisprudence. This introduction aims to set out the basics of the new court and system and create the foun - dation from which other contributors can build a comprehensive model of the new court system in this overall guide to the new Unified Patent Court (UPC). History There has been a form of centralised patent sys - tem in Europe for over 50 years, based around
the European Patent Convention of 1973 (EPC). The EPC created an environment for centralised patent applications and prosecution, based in Munich and allowing for a single application that could be prosecuted in one office and would, in the end, yield a basket of national patents. There are currently 39 contracting states of the EPC. The EPC is not a treaty of the European Union, and it includes countries that are not even in the Enlarged Economic Area (EEA). The most notable example is the United Kingdom, which recently departed the European Union but remains a full member of the EPC. Other examples are Ice - land, Switzerland and Turkey. As part of the ongoing project to perfect the Sin - gle European Market within the European Union, the notion of a Unified Patents Court emerged originally from the Community Patent Conven - tion of 1975. However, it was not until February 2013 that 25 member states of the EU signed the Unified Patents Court Agreement (UPCA), which set in train the preparation of the necessary rules and structures for the Court that finally opened in June 2023. Which Countries Can Participate? Any full member state of the European Union has the option to participate, but Spain, Poland and
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