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ARTICLE · 11 JULY 2024

The UPC In Numbers: One Year On

Boult Wade Tennant LLP
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Since its launch in 2023, the Unitary Patent system has registered over 29,939 patents, with strong uptake from medical technology, large enterprises, and international applicants, particularly from Germany and the U.S.

United KingdomIntellectual Property
Boult Wade Tennant
Boult Wade Tennant
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Since the UPC opened its doors and the first Unitary Patents were filed in the summer of 2023, the unitary route for European patents has been sought over 30,000 times, with 29,939 Unitary Patents being registered – an uptake rate of 19.6%.

In this article we'll consider the early life of the UPC and the unitary patent so far in numbers.

Application figures by industry

The figures on Unitary Patents (UP) filed so far demonstrates a broad interest in seeking unitary registration. Medical Technology is the largest single source of UPs by a considerable margin (with some 12% of the total, and over 3,000 filed to date). However, beyond this the statistics become more congested, with Transport, Digital Communications, Civil engineering and Other Special Machines all seeing around 5% of the total filed. When taken as a whole, the chemistry fields of Organic fine chemistry,

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