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How the Unified Patent Court Works: A Litigator's Guide to Divisions, Timelines & Outcomes

How does the UPC work? A litigator's guide to its divisions, the front-loaded ~12–14 month timeline, bifurcation, languages, opt-out and the pan-European injunction.

Since it opened on 1 June 2023, the Unified Patent Court has done something European patent litigation never could before: let a single panel rule on infringement and validity across 18 member states, and hand down one injunction that runs in all of them. To understand how the UPC works, you have to hold two ideas at once — a court built for speed, with an oral hearing on the merits targeted at roughly 12 to 14 months from filing, and a court built for reach, where the prize and the peril are both continent-wide. This guide walks a litigator new to the system through the structure, the procedure, and what the early caseload actually looks like.

What the UPC is — one court, 18 states, two kinds of patent

The UPC is a single international court, shared by the EU member states that have ratified the UPC Agreement. Seventeen states were in at launch; Romania became the eighteenth on 1 September 2024 (per Freshfields' UPC guide). It is not an EU institution and it does not cover every European country — notably the UK (post-Brexit), Spain, Poland and, for now, Ireland sit outside it.

Two kinds of patent fall within its walls. First, the new Unitary Patent — a single right with uniform effect across the participating states, granted by the EPO and litigated only at the UPC. Second, the classic European patent ("bundle" EP) validated in UPC states — these are inside the UPC's jurisdiction by default during a transitional period, unless the proprietor has filed an opt-out (more below). The headline draw for claimants is the same in both cases: one set of proceedings, one decision, and the prospect of a pan-European injunction spanning every UPC state at once. The mirror-image risk, as Freshfields puts it, is that the same single proceeding can revoke the patent with the same Europe-wide effect.

The court structure: local, regional, central — and Luxembourg on top

The UPC has a Court of First Instance and a single Court of Appeal in Luxembourg (which also houses the Registry). The Court of First Instance is where almost everything starts, and it comes in three flavours.

TierSeatsWhat it hears
Local divisions (13)DE ×4 (Düsseldorf, Munich, Mannheim, Hamburg), plus Paris, The Hague, Milan, Brussels, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Vienna, Helsinki, LjubljanaInfringement actions (and any revocation counterclaim) where the defendant is based or the infringement occurs. Germany is the only state with four, reflecting its caseload.
Regional division (1)Nordic-Baltic, seated in StockholmSame role as a local division, shared by Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Central divisionParis (seat) · Munich section · Milan section (since 1 July 2024)Standalone revocation and non-infringement actions; cases split by patent subject matter (broadly: Paris = physics/electronics & SPCs; Munich = mechanical engineering & chemistry; Milan = human necessities).
Court of AppealLuxembourgAppeals from the Court of First Instance, on fact and law.

This is borne out by the cases on our platform. Of the UPC decisions and orders our database has classified, the busiest forums by a clear margin are Munich LD (626), the Court of Appeal (614) and Düsseldorf LD (388), trailed by Mannheim (295) and the Paris central division (200) — Germany's four local divisions plus Luxembourg dominate the workload, exactly as the structure predicts.

The front-loaded procedure and the 12–14 month target

The single most important thing to internalise about how the UPC works is that it is front-loaded. Unlike the staggered disclosure of common-law litigation, you are expected to put your full case — every argument, every piece of evidence, your validity and infringement positions — into your first written pleadings. The court then drives the matter through three phases on a tight timetable:

  • Written procedure — statement of claim, defence, and any counterclaim for revocation, exchanged on fixed deadlines.
  • Interim procedure — a judge-rapporteur manages the case toward trial, narrowing issues and fixing the hearing.
  • Oral procedure — a short, focused hearing (often a single day), typically scheduled 12 to 14 months after the action is filed, with the decision expected within roughly six weeks of that hearing (De Clercq & Partners; Mewburn Ellis on the Court of Appeal's own "front-loading" guidance).

Those figures are targets, not guarantees — they assume no major complications, and complex or multi-patent matters can run longer. But they explain why the UPC has drawn work away from slower national forums.

There is a separate, much faster track for provisional measures. A preliminary injunction (preliminary injunction) can be sought — and granted or refused — in a matter of days to weeks, especially where urgency and the threat of imminent infringement are made out. That speed is precisely why preliminary injunctions are a strategic battleground in their own right; grant rates vary sharply by division, a topic we treat separately.

Revocation, counterclaims and the bifurcation question

Validity is rarely a spectator. When a patentee sues for infringement at a local or regional division, the defendant's standard riposte is a counterclaim for revocation filed in the same action — and on our data, revocation is overwhelmingly defensive: of the 407 revocation matters our platform has classified, 296 are counterclaims versus 111 standalone revocation actions.

So does the UPC bifurcate — split infringement and validity into separate proceedings, German-style? In principle, no. As Bardehle Pagenberg explains, the UPC operates a non-bifurcated system by default: the same panel decides infringement and validity together. But Article 33(3) UPCA gives the local/regional division discretion: faced with a revocation counterclaim, it may (a) keep both and rule on them together, (b) refer the counterclaim to the central division while pausing or proceeding on infringement, or (c) send the whole case to the central division if the parties agree. Early practice — the Mannheim division among others — treats hearing both together as the norm and bifurcation as exceptional, used only where the circumstances of the case demand it (AOShearman; Hoyng Rokh Monegier). For a litigator, the practical point is that you should generally plan to fight infringement and validity in the same room, on the same timetable — but watch for the rare referral.

Languages, opt-out, and the choices that come before filing

Two threshold decisions shape any UPC strategy.

Language. The language of proceedings before a local or regional division is an official language of the host state (or an EPO language — English, French or German — that the state has designated); central-division cases run in the language the patent was granted in. In practice the system is tilting decisively toward English, which accounted for around 54% of Court of First Instance cases as of early 2025, ahead of German at roughly 39%.

Opt-out. For classic European patents, proprietors can remove a patent from the UPC's jurisdiction by filing an opt-out, available throughout a transitional period of seven years (extendable to fourteen) that began on 1 June 2023 — so, on the current schedule, running until at least mid-2030. An opt-out keeps a bundle EP in the national courts and shields it from a single central revocation; it can be withdrawn later, provided no national action has been started. Uptake has been substantial — public estimates put cumulative opt-outs well into the hundreds of thousands (Pinsent Masons; Boult) — which is why "stay in or opt out" remains one of the most consequential calls a portfolio holder makes.

What the early caseload tells you

The cases our platform has classified give a feel for what practitioners are actually bringing. Across the main first-instance and appeal matters in our database, the mix breaks down as roughly Infringement 611 · Revocation 407 · Provisional Measures 125 · Appeals 478 · Other 181. Two things stand out. First, infringement leads, but validity is never far behind: in our set of infringement actions decided on the merits, just over half end with the patent valid and infringed, about a quarter not infringed, and about a quarter invalid. Second, the appellate layer is already busy: the volume of appeal matters shows the Luxembourg court is actively shaping UPC law, not waiting in the wings.

What to watch

The architecture is settled; the case law that fills it is not. Three threads are worth tracking as the UPC matures. Long-arm jurisdiction — how far a UPC division can reach to decide infringement of the non-UPC (even UK) parts of a European patent — is the defining open question, and it is now headed to the CJEU. The 2030 transitional sunset will force a wave of opt-out and stay-in decisions as the window to shelter classic EPs narrows. And the Court of Appeal's reversal posture — early on it has overturned a meaningful share of the merits decisions it has reviewed — will tell us how much first-instance speed is worth if Luxembourg routinely revisits the result. For a court not yet two years old when this was written, the direction of travel is clear: faster, broader, and increasingly the default venue for European patent disputes.

Want the numbers behind the structure — grant rates, time-to-decision and outcome base rates by division? Explore the data on our platform.

Sources

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See the data behind the analysis.

Every article here is built on UPClytics — cross-case UPC analytics on divisions, judges, firms, and outcomes.