The participating Member States have entrusted the EPO with administrative tasks relating, in particular, to processing requests for unitary effect, maintaining the Register for unitary patent protection UP Register and collecting renewal fees (Art. 9 Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012 and Rule 4(2) UPR). The UPP Division was established as a special EPO department with responsibility for dealing with these tasks (Rule 4(1) UPR).
Each decision of the UPP Division is taken by a legally qualified member (Rule 4(3) UPR). Certain duties have been entrusted to other employees (see the decision of the President of the EPO dated 30 May 2022 (OJ EPO 2022, A69)).