Analyzing strategic decisions of patent owners under the new Unitary Patent System in the European Union
The new Unified Patent Court (UPC) in Europe allows patent owners access to centralized enforcement, albeit at the risk of centralized invalidation. Moreover, patent owners will enjoy a large cost reduction for new unitary patents (UPs). With the introduction of the UPC/UP system in 2023, owners of existing European patents and patent applications could opt out of the new court system during a three-month time window. We derive a set of hypotheses and combine data on the opt-out decisions with a rich set of patent and owner characteristics to test them.
