Heli Pihlajamaa, the EPO’s principal director for patent law and procedures, joins us to take stock of the unitary patent following its second anniversary.

In this episode, we bring you a unitary patent special.

The unitary patent and the associated Unified Patent Court (UPC) went live on June 1 2023. 

To mark the second anniversary, we caught up with Heli Pihlajamaa, the EPO’s principal director for patent law and procedures, to assess some of the trends so far.

Pihlajamaa is responsible for all patent law and procedural matters under the European Patent Convention and Patent Cooperation Treaty, including operational developments and policy. 

She also deals with all unitary patent-related tasks assigned to the EPO.

Managing IP editor Max Walters sat down with Pihlajamaa to discuss:

• The first two years of the unitary patent system, including the number of filings and key trends;
• Feedback from users regarding the benefits or challenges of the unitary patent system;

·       Information on how the EPO supports users in navigating the system, especially those unfamiliar with it; 

• What users can expect from the new case management system being jointly developed by the EPO and UPC; and
• What’s in the pipeline for the court

We will be back with a new podcast episode soon. Thank you for listening.