Following the deposit of the instrument of ratification by Germany on 17th of February 2023, the Unified Patent Court is set to open its doors on 1st of June 2023.

Prior to the entry into operations of the Court, a 3-month Sunrise period which has been set for the interest of users, will kick off as of 1st of March 2023 at 9:00 CET. Starting from this date and time, it will be possible to opt-out European patents and register as a representative before the Unified Patent Court.

As from the Sunrise period, the CMS is accessible via the following link: https://cms.unified-patent-court.org/login

The possibility to file an opt-out will be available as of the start of the Sunrise Period and throughout the entire transitional period under Article 83(1) of the UPC Agreement.

Please note the conditions for opt-out as per Article 5 of the UPC Rules of Procedure and summarized in the opt-out information page of our Website: Opt-Out | Unified Patent Court (unified-patent-court.org).

Opting out from the exclusive jurisdiction of the Court can be requested for European patents and published European patent application, as well as supplementary protection certificates, issued for a product protected by a “classic” European patent.

UPC’s recommendation: for all external users that will perform massive opt-outs via API, we strongly advise that you do not wait until the last couple of weeks of the Sunrise period to perform opt-out calls.

Organizations who are planning to file a large number of opt-outs are advised to inform the UPC, as far as possible, of the forecasted date of the opt-outs’ filing. The UPC provides a dedicated communication channel via the contact form by selecting the following type of enquiry: Planning Massive Opt-Out.

The sunrise period can also be used to register as a representative before the UPC, under the criteria of Article 48 of the UPC Agreement.

Two categories are eligible to become representative before the UPC: lawyers authorised to practice before a court of a Contracting Member State  (Article 48(1) UPCA) and European Patent Attorneys who are entitled to act as professional representatives before the European Patent Office and who have appropriate qualifications as per Article 48(2) UPCA and the EPLC Rules.

Please note that both Sunrise functionalities (i.e. opt-outs and registration as a representative before the UPC) will be available on the CMS. The CMS also provides extensive guidance for its users. For more information, please consult our website, including our updated FAQs.

As a reminder, the Sunrise Practice period currently ongoing on the CERUS environment will remain open until the end of March, allowing external users to have extra test and preparation to use the CMS. Please do not use the test environment if you wish to effectively lodge and opt-out or register as a representative.

The CMS authentication process works with a strong authentication scheme. In order to use the CMS, you will need to create an official account on the production environment   accessible on the following link: https://cms.unified-patent-court.org/login. More information on how to create an account is available under the following link.

In case of needed support, users can send their requests using the contact form which is available on the UPC website: https://www.unified-patent-court.org/en/contact.