The Registry of the Unified Patent Court maintains a number of Registers which are publicly accessible via their website at www.unified-patent-court.org.

Cases

Most obviously, there is a register of cases filed at the UPC. Cases appear there shortly after they are filed, once they have passed through the initial check by Registry staff (which may be before the case has been served on the defendant). Search is possible in various fields, including party and representative name, and proceeding type. The broadest way to search is to select a particular type of action, such as “infringement” or “revocation”, which will return all the actions of that type. (A date range search will also return opt out requests and UPC representative registration requests, which are also a type of UPC proceeding, and so is not effective as a way to search the litigation cases generally). The information shown is currently a little incomplete. It is expected that this will improve in time.

Opt-outs of (non-unitary) European Patents

Then, there is a register of opt outs. Here, you enter a European patent number, and if it has been opted out then details of the opt out appear. If it has not been opted out, i.e. is subject to the jurisdiction of the UPC, then “No results found” is returned.

Representatives

Finally, there is a register of representatives. It is only possible to search by name of representative or by their entitlement to represent as set out in the person’s application to be recorded as a representative. This will usually be as a lawyer authorised to practice in a UPC member state, or as a European patent attorney with one of a number of possible additional qualifications. Selecting one of those entitlements will return all representatives having that entitlement.

For all of these public facing Register search tools, there are also equivalent search interfaces available within the UPC Case Management System, available to registered users of the CMS. These provide greater detail and the information is more reliably presented. Therefore, please contact us if you are interested in a particular patent or litigation case.