The Unitary Patent and the UPC, explained

What the Unitary Patent is

The Unitary Patent rests on two EU regulations adopted under enhanced cooperation: Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012 creates unitary patent protection, and Council Regulation (EU) No 1260/2012 sets the translation rules. Both apply from the date the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) entered into force, which was 1 June 2023. Twenty-five EU states take part in the enhanced cooperation; Spain and Croatia do not (UP Guidelines 1.3.1).

Nothing changes before grant. The application is filed, searched and examined at the EPO exactly like any other European application, as set out in our guide to the European patent application. The choice comes after grant: validate country by country as before, or ask for unitary effect in the participating states and validate nationally only where the Unitary Patent does not reach. The patent must have been granted with the same claims for all participating states (Rule 5(2)(a) UPR).

How to request unitary effect

• Deadline: no later than 1 month after the mention of grant is published in the European Patent Bulletin (Rule 6(1) UPR). The period cannot be extended, but re-establishment of rights is available. The request can be filed early, once the decision to grant has issued.
• Form: in writing, in the language of the proceedings, normally on EPO Form 7000.
• Fee: none. There is no filing, examination or registration fee (UP Guidelines 3.1).
• Translation: a full translation of the specification, meaning the description, the claims and any text in the drawings (see below).

The translation requirement during the transitional period

Under Article 6(1) of Regulation 1260/2012, the request must include a full translation:

• into English, if the language of the proceedings was French or German; or
• into any other official EU language, if the proceedings were in English.

The translation is for information only and has no legal effect (Art. 6(2)). It need not be certified. An independent committee reviews the quality of machine translation six years after 1 June 2023 and every two years after that, and the Commission may propose ending the requirement. If it is not ended earlier, it lapses 12 years after 1 June 2023 (Art. 6(3) to (5)). Separately, in an infringement dispute the proprietor must supply, at its own cost, a full translation into the language of the state where the infringement took place or where the alleged infringer is domiciled, if the alleged infringer asks for one (Art. 4).

Unitary Patent countries

A Unitary Patent covers the participating states in which the UPCA is in force on the day unitary effect is registered (Art. 18(2) Regulation 1257/2012). That is 18 states today:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden.

The system started with 17. Romania joined on 1 September 2024. The territory of each Unitary Patent is fixed for its whole life, so a patent registered before that date does not cover Romania, and one registered today will not extend to a state that ratifies later.

• Signed the UPCA, not yet ratified: Cyprus, Czechia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland and Slovakia.
• Ireland: ratification needs a constitutional referendum. The vote set for 7 June 2024 was postponed in April 2024, and no new date had been set as of October 2026 (IPOI).
• In the enhanced cooperation but not the UPCA: Poland.
• Outside the system: Spain and Croatia, and every non-EU EPC state, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and Türkiye.

For any of these you still validate the European patent nationally, alongside the Unitary Patent.

How the Unified Patent Court is organised

The UPC is a court common to the ratifying states. It has exclusive jurisdiction over Unitary Patents and, after the transitional period, over classic European patents that have not been opted out. Its structure is set by the UPCA:

• Central division: seat in Paris, with sections in Munich and Milan (Art. 7(2), as amended by the Administrative Committee decision of 26 June 2023, which replaced London with Milan). Cases are split by IPC section: Milan takes section A (human necessities), Munich takes C and F, and Paris takes B, D, E, G and H plus SPCs. Stand-alone revocation actions and declarations of non-infringement start here (Art. 33(4)).
• Local divisions: set up in a participating state at its request, with up to four per state depending on its caseload (Art. 7(3) and (4)). Germany has four: Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Mannheim and Munich. Infringement actions are usually brought here.
• Regional divisions: shared by two or more states (Art. 7(5)). The Nordic-Baltic regional division, for Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, sits in Stockholm.
• Court of Appeal: in Luxembourg (Art. 9(5)).

Parties are represented by lawyers authorised to practise before a court of a participating state, or by European patent attorneys with an appropriate qualification such as the European Patent Litigation Certificate (Art. 48 UPCA).

The UPC opt-out under Article 83

For classic European patents there is a transitional period of seven years from 1 June 2023, so until 31 May 2030, during which infringement and revocation actions can still be brought before national courts as well as the UPC (Art. 83(1)). The Administrative Committee may extend it by up to seven years after consulting users (Art. 83(5)).

• Who can opt out: the proprietor of a classic European patent, the applicant for a European application, and the holder of an SPC based on a European patent (Art. 83(3)).
• Effect: the patent is taken out of the UPC's exclusive jurisdiction, so national courts hear actions on it.
• Deadline: filed with the UPC Registry no later than one month before the transitional period ends. It is barred if an action on the patent is already pending before the UPC.
• Withdrawal: allowed at any time unless an action has already been brought before a national court (Art. 83(4)).
• Unitary Patents: cannot be opted out. Requesting unitary effect means accepting the UPC.

The opt-out is a trade-off. It protects a valuable patent from a single UPC revocation action that would take it out in every UPC state at once. It also gives up the option of one infringement action, with one injunction, across those states.

Unitary Patent renewal fees

A Unitary Patent has one renewal fee a year, paid to the EPO in euros. The amounts are set by Article 2(1) of the Rules relating to Fees for Unitary Patent Protection. Under the "True Top 4" model adopted in 2015, each fee roughly equals the combined national renewal fees of the four countries where European patents were most often validated in 2015: Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

• Patent years run from the filing date of the European application. Unitary Patent fees are due only for the years after the mention of grant (Rule 13(1) UPR); the years before are covered by the ordinary EPC renewal fees on the application. With a typical grant in year 4 or 5, the year 2 to 4 amounts rarely apply.
• Years 5 to 10 total €4,400. Years 5 to 20 total €35,270.
• A fee is due on the last day of the month of the filing anniversary and cannot be paid more than three months early. A late fee can still be paid within six months with a 50% surcharge (Rule 13(3) UPR).
• Filing a statement offering licences of right reduces the renewal fees by 15% while it stays registered.
• Anyone may pay the fee. A proprietor outside the EPC states does not need a representative just to pay renewals.

Unitary Patent vs classic validation

The EPO's own cost comparison puts a Unitary Patent at €7,627 to year 10 and €46,499 to year 20, including translation and attorney costs, against €55,110 and €219,412 for validating a classic European patent in the same 18 states. Most applicants do not validate in 18 states, so the real question is how many you would otherwise validate in.

Since the renewal fee matches roughly four countries' combined fees, the Unitary Patent tends to pay off once you would validate in about four or more participating states. Classic validation still makes sense when:

• you need only two or three markets, such as Germany and France;
• you want to drop countries one by one as the product matures, to cut renewal costs; or
• the patent is valuable enough that you would rather not expose it to central revocation, and you plan to opt it out.

The two can be combined: a Unitary Patent for the 18 states, plus national validation in the UK, Spain, Switzerland or any other state it does not cover.

The compensation scheme for translation costs

Applicants who file in an EU language other than English, French or German, and so have to translate into an EPO language before grant, can recover part of that cost. The lump sum is €500 (Art. 4(1) RFeesUPP). To qualify (Art. 5 Regulation 1260/2012, Rule 8 UPR):

• the proprietor, and the original applicant if different, must have their residence or principal place of business in an EU state (participating or not);
• each must be a natural person, an SME, a non-profit organisation, a university or a public research organisation;
• the application, or the PCT application behind it, must have been filed in an official EU language other than English, French or German; and
• the request must be filed together with the request for unitary effect. Form 7000 has a checkbox for it.

What it means for US and Indian applicants

Nationality does not matter. Any proprietor of a European patent can request unitary effect, including a US or Indian company entering the EPO directly or through the PCT. The practical differences are these:

• Representation: a proprietor with no residence or place of business in an EPC state must file the request through a European patent attorney or other authorised representative (Rule 20(1) UPR with Art. 133(2) EPC), just as during prosecution.
• No compensation: the €500 translation compensation requires EU residence, and applications filed in English do not qualify in any case.
• Litigation: a single UPC action can now stop an infringer in all 18 states, and a competitor can also attack the patent in all of them at once. One option is to take unitary effect for most patents and keep the most valuable ones as opted-out classic European patents.
• Budget: renewal fees come in one invoice in euros, instead of a separate fee to each national office.

For the steps before grant, including PCT entry, see the European patent application guide. To check what is already patented in Europe before you file, use our free EPO patent search or a prior art search.

More EPO guides

• How to file a European patent application

  Direct or Euro-PCT filing, search, examination, grant and validation, with the EPO fees in force from 1 April 2026.

• Patent drawing requirements: USPTO, EPO and India

  37 CFR 1.84, the EPO rules that replaced Rule 46 EPC, and Indian rule 15, compared side by side.

• How to write patent claims: USPTO, EPO and India

  Claim structure and worked examples, then the claim rules and fees at the USPTO, the EPO and the Indian Patent Office, side by side.

All guides, by patent office