Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court: Attractive for SMEs?

The Unitary Patent Package (UPP) was conceived as a means of simplifying and centralising patent protection and enforcement across participating EU Member States. The introduction of a supranational patent jurisdiction and a unitary protection system was intended to reduce costs and enhance legal certainty for patent holders, particularly those belonging to the category of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Historically, these enterprises have faced challenges associated with the complexity and expense of fragmented national systems. Two years after the entry into force of the UPP, the present paper examines early empirical data to assess the extent to which SMEs have engaged with the Unitary Patent (UP), and to evaluate the UPP's attractiveness as a solution for European SMEs, in light of existing patent protection options. Keywords: Unitary Patent Package (UPP), Unified Patent Court (UPC), small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), patent enforcement DOI:10.3935/cyelp.21.2025.621 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution − Non-Commercial − No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: I Božac, ‘Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court: Attractive for SMEs?’ (2025) 21 CYELP [ONLINE FIRST].