There will be no cost associated with opting out of the UPC’s jurisdiction, and a 40% discount on court fees for micro and small enterprises.

On 26 February 2016 the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) announced that it has reached an agreement on the Rules on Court fees and recoverable costs for the UPC .
The agreement takes into account the results of the public consultation on UPC fees held in mid-2015.

The essential points of the document are as follows.

No fee for opting out of UPC jurisdiction
There will be no fee for opting out of the UPC’s jurisdiction, or for withdrawing the opt-out.

UPC fee composition
The agreement confirms that fees for proceedings before the UPC will be made up of a fixed fee to which a fee based on the value of the dispute must be added if the value of the dispute is more than 500,000 euro.

The value of the dispute will be determined in most cases on the basis of the license fee that could have been paid for the patent at issue.
For instance, the fixed part for the tax in counterfeiting proceedings will be 11,000 euro, while the fee for a separate counterclaim for revocation will be 20,000 euro.

The value-based fee starts at 2,500 euro for disputes worth up to 750,000 euro and will rise in proportion to the value of the dispute itself up to a ceiling of 325,000 euro in proceedings worth 50 million euro or more.

Fee reductions for small enterprises
Micro and small enterprises will have access to a 40% reduction on all UPC fees.

Recoverable costs
The UPC Agreement provides that the unsuccessful party bears the successful party’s costs, up to a ceiling figure. Under the new agreement, such a ceiling will be based on the value of the dispute, with a minimum of 38,000 euro for disputes valued up to 250,000 euro to a maximum of 2 million euro for disputes worth over 50 million euro.

The ceiling may vary in the case of particularly complex proceedings, or in consideration of the financial capacity of the party: the ceiling can be lowered for micro, small and medium enterprises, no-profit organisations, universities, public research organisations or natural persons, if the cost would threaten the economic existence of the party.

29 February 2016