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The introduction of the Unitary
Patent (UP) and the Unified
Patent Court (UPC)
will create new data, for example, around the legal status of European patents.
The data relating to unitary effect will be curated and reported in the EPO’s
many patent information tools and services, providing users with an additional
layer of patent information. To help users recognise UP-related information in patent
knowledge products, a new marker – “C0″ – will signal those patents
for which unitary effect has been registered. Some products, such as the European
Patent Register, Espacenet, etc., will also display a blue icon (
) to indicate that unitary effect has been requested or
registered for a given patent application.
Overview of UP-related information in patent
knowledge
The table below provides an overview of the most prominent
UP-related information in selected EPO patent information data, tools and
services:
| Product with information on unitary effect | C0 marker displayed | Search for registered UP |
Access to UP Register |
Access to UP file inspection |
Access to UPC | Legal events and opt-out information |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DOCDB in XML | yes | no | no | no | no | no |
| Espacenet | yes | yes | yes | yes [1] | no | yes [2] |
|
EP bibliographic data (EBD) |
yes | yes | no | no | no | yes |
|
European Patent Bulletin |
yes | yes | no | no | no | no |
|
EP Bulletin Search |
no | yes | yes | yes [1] | yes | yes |
|
EP full-text data [3] |
no | no | no | no | no | no |
|
EP full-text search |
no | no | yes [4] | yes [4] | no | yes [2] |
| European Patent Register | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
|
European Publication Server |
no | no | yes [4] | yes [4] | no | yes [4] |
| Global Patent Index (GPI) | yes | yes | yes [4] | yes [4] | no | yes [2] |
|
INPADOC worldwide legal event data |
yes | no | no | no | no | yes |
| OPS | yes | yes [5] | yes [6] | no | yes [7] | yes [7] |
| PATSTAT | yes | yes | no | no [8] | no | yes |
- [1]
via UP Register - [2]
Legal events view - [3]
for B8 and B9 - [4]
via the Register - [5]
in Published data and Register services - [6]
in Register service - [7]
in OPS Legal and Family services - [8] in PATSTAT Global
Unitary Patent in the European Patent Register and EP Bulletin
Unitary Patent in the European Patent Register
Using the European Patent Register, you can search for
patents for which unitary effect has been requested or registered.
The Register’s navigation bar will have a new structure comprising
two areas: the European procedure area with submenu items identified by the
prefix EP and a new Unitary Patent area with submenu items identified by the prefix
UP:
If unitary effect has been requested, the Unitary Patent part
will display three submenu items: UP About this file, UP Event history and UP
All documents.
You will also notice some changes on the Register’s Advanced
search interface. Two new search fields will be displayed: Unitary effect
request date and Unitary effect registration date. To filter on the
basis of granted patents for which unitary effect has or has not been requested
or registered, use the operators yes or
true, or no or false in the respective fields. Alternatively,
you can use the date you are interested in to retrieve the relevant patents.
The same can be done using Smart search. For that, you can
use two new field identifiers:
- ufd –
unitary effect request date - urd –
unitary effect registration date
On the search results list, you
will find a new Unitary Patent column. This column will display a blue
icon to identify patents for which unitary effect has been requested or
registered. Clicking on the blue icon will take you directly to the “UP
About this file” panel view of the Unitary Patent Register.
Click image to enlarge
The C0 marker will be associated with the EP number when unitary
effect is registered and visible in the various UP panel views.
A new section in the EP About this file panel view – Opt-out from the exclusive competence of
the Unified Patent Court – will provide a direct link to the opt-out information
held by the UPC.
A record of the information communicated to the European
Patent Office concerning proceedings before the Unified Patent Court will be provided
under Proceedings before the Unified Patent
Court in the UP About this file panel view and will include a direct link
to the UPC.
Unitary Patent in the European Patent Bulletin
Information regarding European patents with unitary effect will
be published in chapter IV of the European Patent Bulletin under the title European
patents with unitary effect. You will be able to find most important UP-related
legal events here.
Changes, references to deleted data and rectifications relating
to previous entries published under IV.1-IV.11 will appear in section IV.12 Alterations
and Corrections.
A complete overview of chapter IV’s contents can be found in
the introduction part A of EP Bulletin (Contents). Some additional
information about the sections will be provided in part D (Supplementary
Details).
As the list of legal events that will be published in the EP
Bulletin’s UP chapter is large, amounting to 18 main events and 22 changed or
deleted events (IV.12), here are just a few examples of some of them:
IV.1(1) Date of filing of request for unitary effect for
the European patent
-
Date of receipt of request for unitary effect will be indicated
below the European publication number, INID code (11).
IV.1(2) Date of withdrawal of request for unitary effect for
the European patent
-
Date of withdrawal of request for unitary effect will be indicated
below the European publication number, INID code (11).
IV.2(1) European patents for which unitary effect is
registered (C0)
-
Date of registration of the unitary effect together with
procedural language code will be indicated below the European publication
number, INID code (11), followed by other relevant bibliographic data. -
Only registered unitary effect entries will be published
in this section.
IV.2(2) European patents for which a request for unitary
effect has been rejected
-
Date on which the request for unitary effect was rejected will
be indicated below the European publication number, INID code (11). -
Only rejected unitary effect entries will be published in
this section.
Changes and deletions will be published in section IV.12.
Click image to enlarge
Specifics on other patent knowledge products
In this chapter you will find more details on further EPO patent information data, tools and services.
EP Bulletin search
All UP-related information available in the EP bibliographic
data (EBD) will be searchable in EP Bulletin search. Special
UP-related search criteria, such as those listed below, will be available to
help with query building:
For example,
the query UAC = * will retrieve all
documents where an action has been filed at the UPC.
EP Bulletin search will
display all EP- and UP-related information available, for example, side-by-side:
Click image to enlarge
You can also customise the content of your result list by
adding columns that include information of interest to you, e.g. UP-related
information:
All EP- and UP-related information can be added in the result
list for display and download, e.g. in CSV or XML format.
EP Bulletin search also includes a link to the Register.
Espacenet
In Espacenet, you will be able to use the C0 marker to search
for EP patents for which unitary effect has been registered with either of the following
queries: pn=EPC0 or EPnnnnnnnC0. Use the latter if you want to search for a
specific EPC0 number.
The C0 marker is used for registered UPs and will be visible
in the result list and document-related views.
Click image to enlarge
You will find a new link next to the blue icon
(see Unitary Patent
in the European Patent Register) in the Bibliographic data, Description, Claims
and INPADOC family views providing access to the UP Register.
An EPC0 has no bibliographic
data, description, claims, drawings or orginal document of its own. Therefore,
the Bibliographic data view of the registered UPs (EPC0) will display the data
from the EPB document and the abstract from the EPA document; the Description, Claims,
Drawings and Original document views will display the data from the EPB
document.
Click image to enlarge
Use the Legal events view for the legal events
relating to the unitary patent.
Click image to enlarge
Global
Patent Index
UP-related information will be searchable and displayed in Global
Patent Index when available in DOCDB and INPADOC. This information includes registered
UPs, that is, patents with EPC0 numbers, and information on participating
member states. Global Patent Index will also include a link to the Register.
The EPO’s bulk data sets
UP-related information
will be available in the following bulk data sets: EBD, Register in Bulk, EP full-text, DOCDB in XML, INPADOC in
XML.
EP
bibliographic data (EBD)
For European patents with unitary effect the related
bibliographic data will be stored in a new group tag – B7000 – and will include
all the items described in Rule16 UPR and in the Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012.
An XML document with kind=”C0″ & status=”u” (for
unpublished) will also be available with the same bibliographic data as the EP-B
document.
European
Patent Register data
All the publicly available procedural information on
European patent applications as they pass through each stage of the granting
process will include the UP-related events that are also reflected in the European
Patent Register data.
EP
full-text data
UP-related
information will be made available in the XML bibliographic data of subsequent
publications such as B8 and B9 publications (i.e. presence of an element B7000
plus relevant sub-elements – eventually also B920 including Unified Patent
Court opt-out information).
EPO
worldwide bibliographic data (DOCDB)
The C0 marker is
added as a publication step in the bibliographic data and as part of the patent
family. The list of member states covered by the Unitary Patent will also be reflected
in C0 bibliographic data.
EPO
worldwide legal event data (INPADOC)
EPO
worldwide legal event data (INPADOC) will contain legal events for all
stages of the UP procedure here.
These events will originate from the EP bibliographic data (EBD), the European Patent
Register and the Unified Patent Court.
Open Patent Services (OPS)
UP-related
information will be available in OPS services. However, while the OPS
Published data and Register services will support both UP search and retrieval,
in the OPS Legal and Family services only retrieval will be possible.
To search for UPs in the OPS Register service, you can use
the same field identifiers as in Register.
-
ufd – unitary effect
request date -
urd – unitary effect
registration date
UP-related information will then be displayed using the “upp”
constituent.
In the OPS Published data service, UP-related information
will be displayed using the “biblio” and “equivalents”
constituents.
The OPS Legal and Family services will display UP-related
information.
For OPS documentation and an OPS manual, see under Further
information on the OPS
web pages. You can also browse the OPS
forum and the OPS
FAQ for further information.
Further information
Reading material/guides
- UP
overview video - Unitary
Patent Guide for procedural information on obtaining, maintaining and managing
UPs
Event recordings
Hear from experts and learn more about UP-related topics by
watching the EPO’s event recordings:
Patent Knowledge Nuggets
Patent Knowledge Nuggets are a series of short videos that aim
to help users understand features of EPO data tools and how to use them. Some
of these videos relate to the UP system:
Upcoming UP-related events and training
More about the Unified Patent Court