United Kingdom: Patent

Since the Unified Patent Court opened on 1 June 2023, one of the more interesting legal questions which has been considered is the matter of jurisdictional competence. Following on from our comparison of the EPO and UPC’s approaches to inventive step (available here) and as the dust begins to settle on some of the early decisions, it is a good time to reflect on the early decisions of the UPC in relation to jurisdiction and to compare the UPC with the EPO in this regard.

The European Patent Office's Enlarged Board of Appeal has issued a landmark decision in case G 1/25, fundamentally reshaping the requirements for adapting patent descriptions when claims are amended. The ruling establishes a narrow definition of "inconsistency" and rejects the previous practice of demanding wholesale clean-up of descriptions to remove all unclaimed subject-matter. Patent practitioners and applicants now face a more streamlined approach that focuses only on inconsistencies with genuine legal

Biotechnology and chemistry startups face a critical question when filing priority patent applications: how much experimental data is actually required? While the answer depends on the predictability of the technology, the European Patent Office's strict disclosure standards mean that insufficient technical support can invalidate priority claims entirely, leaving innovations vulnerable to competitor filings and prior art that emerges during the assumed protection period.