In accordance with Rule 3 of the Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection in conjunction with Art. 10(2)(a) of the European Patent Convention, the President of the European Patent Office has adopted, with effect from 1 April 2025, the Unitary Patent Guidelines.
These Guidelines are updated annually to take account of developments in law and practice related to the European patent with unitary effect (referred to as "Unitary Patent"). Usually, updates involve amendments to specific sentences or passages on individual pages to bring the text into line with recent legal developments regarding concerning the Unitary Patent and EPO practice as these continue to evolve. It follows that no update can ever claim to be complete. In general, each edition is updated to reflect the situation as of 1 December of the previous year. Any indication from readers drawing attention to errors as well as suggestions for improvement are highly appreciated and may be sent by email to [email protected].
The binding version of the Unitary Patent Guidelines is published by the EPO in searchable HTML format and as a PDF file on the EPO website at epo.org.
In the HTML publication, modifications can be viewed by selecting the Show modifications box in the upper right corner, which displays inserted text with a green background and deleted text in red strikethrough font. For sections in which no changes have been made, the selection box is greyed out.