Since the start of operations 1 June 2023, the Unified Patent Court has received 160 cases. The court published an overview of the cases last week. The German local divisions are by far the most popular for infringement actions, and the language of 49 percent of the cases is German as well.
The local division in Munich stands out with 54 cases altogether: 23 infringement actions, 24 counterclaims for revocations and 7 applications for provisional measures. The central division in Paris has so far taken 21 cases: 20 revocation actions, 1 case concerning a declaration of non-infringement. The local division in Paris has had 19 cases (7 infringement, 11 counterclaim for revocation, 1 application for preserving evidence), followed by Düsseldorf (18 cases), Mannheim (11 cases) and Hamburg (8 cases).
The Nordic-Baltic division and the local division in Milan both have 8 cases, The Hague 4, the Munich central division 4, Brussels and Helsinki 2, Vienna 1. There have not yet been any cases for the local divisions in Copenhagen, Lisbon and Ljubljana.
As the UPC explains in its overview ‘48 counterclaims for revocations have been filed with the Court’s local and regional divisions. This figure however gives an inflated impression unless it is noted that that each defendant in an infringement case needs to file an individual claim for revocation. The 48 counterclaims for revocation come from 18 individual infringement actions.’
Language
The most popular language has been German, with 49 percent of the cases, followed by English (40%), French (4%), Italian (4%) and Dutch (3%).
Unitary Patents
And what about the Unitary Patent? The Statistics and trends centre of the EPO shows that up to 22 December 2023, 16.838 requests for Unitary effect had been filed and 16.427 Unitary Patents had been registered.
Siemens (233), Johnson & Johnson (232), Ericsson (164), Qualcomm (157), Samsung (157) are proprietors of the highest number of Unitary Patents.
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