This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: The Unified Patent Court Agreement entered into force on June 1, 2023. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(July 2023)
Enforcement only on a per-country basis
European patents are granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) under the legal provisions of the European Patent Convention (EPC). However, European patents are enforced at a national level, i.e. on a per-country basis, or, since June 1, 2023, before the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Under Article 64(3) EPC, "any infringement of a European patent shall be dealt with by national law," with the European Patent Office having no legal competence to deal with and to decide on patent infringements in the Contracting States to the EPC. A few, limited aspects relating to the infringement of European patents are however prescribed in the EPC.
Proposals have been long discussed to create a true unitary European patent system across Europe and especially across the European Union (EU), i.e. a European patent system wherein the enforcement of European-wide patents would be dealt at a supranational level rather than at a national level. These projects include the European Union patent (formerly named "Community patent") and the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA). The European patent with unitary effect and the UPC entered into force on June 1, 2023, whereas the EPLA proposal has been dropped.
Until June 1, 2023, the enforcement of European patents was therefore characterized by a fragmented system with "variegated national approaches towards patent-related litigations and (...) the possibility of having opposite decisions (and hence outcome) in case of parallel litigations."[1]
^Malwina Mejer, Bruno van Pottelsberghe de la Potterie, "Economic Incongruities in the European Patent System"[permanent dead link], ECARES working paper 2009‐003, January 2009.
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