Delay to start of UPC sunrise period.

The long-awaited Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court (UPC) have been delayed by a further two months, due to implementation issues in the Case Management System. It has been announced that the sunrise period will now begin on March 1, 2023 (from which date the court will begin accepting opt-out requests), with the full entry into force of the UPC being pushed back also by two months to June 1, 2023.*

The delay has arisen due to late-announced decisions to restrict access to the Case Management System to users in possession of a device providing a specific form of strong authentication. Without means of authentication, users will not be able to interact with the system at all, such as to file an opt-out request.

FRKelly, having been engaged in testing the opt-out functionality system both for individual and bulk opt-out requests, has already acquired and tested the required authentication technology, and is ready to handle opt-out requests as soon as the sunrise period opens.

*In the original version of this article, we indicated that the EPO would also only begin accepting requests to delay grant from March 1. However, just after we published this article, the EPO announced it was going to accept requests for delay of grant, and early requests for unitary effect as and from January 1, 2023.

This article continues FRKelly's series on the upcoming Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court. For more details, check out the following articles:

1. What is a Unitary Patent?

2. What is the Unified Patent Court?

3. How to Apply for a Unitary Patent

4. UPC Structure

5. Register for Unitary Patent Protection

6. UPC Operations

7. What Rights Are Afforded by a Unitary Patent?

8. UPC Opt-Out

9. Opposition, Appeals and Validity of Unitary Patents

10. Will the Unified Patent Court Affect SPCs?

11. Unitary Patent Costs

12. UPC Infringement Actions