UPC reason two: Cost effective system…
9 March 2017
The Unitary Patent system will be cost effective for everyone. It becomes cheaper per country when compared to the traditional bundle of European patents as you seek to protect your invention in an increasing number of countries.
Specifically, the annual cost of renewing a Unitary Patent will be equivalent to the cost of renewing individual patents in the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. As such, a Unitary Patent will become the cheaper option for users who typically validate their European patent application more widely than these territories.
As for users who don’t usually consider protection outside of the UK, France and Germany, for the small price of one additional territory they can extend their patent to all of the other states of the UPC.
Further savings are to be found in reduced validation and translation fees required on grant of a patent application when pursuing the unitary route. Unlike a conventional European patent, there is no requirement for a Unitary Patent to be validated separately in each national territory, which means no local patent office fees and no need to engage local attorneys.
Further, a Unitary Patent need only be translated into one other EU official language after grant, whereas for the current non-unitary European patent, translations need to be filed for many states for the patent to be validated in those territories.
In this series, we give our top 10 reasons to welcome the Unitary Patent system and explore why the system is a great thing for innovative UK businesses. Watch this space for more reasons posted weekly.
