After years of discussions and legal challenges, the European patent with unitary effect (unitary patent) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) are finally set to launch around June 1. The unitary patent is set to be a single patent spanning many European states, and the UPC is set to be a central patent court for patent disputes in Europe.

The unitary patent will not impact prosecution of European patent applications. That is, centralized filing and examination of a single European patent application will remain in force. Once a patent is granted by the European Patent Office (EPO), the applicant will have the option to individually validate in desired European Patent Convention (EPC) states (i.e., the traditional approach), request for unitary effect (i.e., a unitary patent) or request for unitary effect in the participating states and also validate in other nonparticipating EPC states.