The Unitary Patent System and Utility Models

There are myriad open questions and challenges for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) system and the unitary patent, which constitute a new layer to the European patent landscape on top of the existing courts and types of patents. One of those is the question of how this new system will interact with utility models, which seems to have mostly escaped academic scrutiny so far. This chapter explores this interaction, focusing predominantly on the consequences of the new unitary patent and the UPC for strategies surrounding patents and utility models, including the division of judicial competence. By considering, amongst other things, the complicated relationship and overlap of these rights, the limited but influential mandate of the UPC, the fragmented landscape for utility models, and the different sources of law governing a unitary patent, this chapter examines how litigation before the UPC may affect (strategies involving) utility models.