News on the UPC: mitigating the risks from unauthorized opt-out declarations and withdrawals of opt-out declarations

Following a meeting of the Administrative Committee, a number of new documents, including amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), have now been published.

Included is a completely new Rule 5A, tackling the problem of unauthorized opt-out-declarations or withdrawals of opt-out-declarations. By default, it is not checked officially whether an opt out declaration (“Application to opt out” in the wording of Rule 5 of the preliminary version of the Rules of Procedure of the UPC) actually complies with all requirements or has been filed by an authorized person. This situation is similar to priority declarations, which are only examined where necessary, for example during an opposition. In principle it is thus possible that an opt-out declaration is filed erroneously or even fraudulently. The same could happen with withdrawals of opt-out declarations. To mitigate the risks associated, Rule 5A of the Rules of Procedure now allows the proprietor or applicant to request