The Administrative Committee of the Unified Patent Court has adopted amendments to the court fees.
The following is a rough summary of the amendments:
- The current court fees are increased generally by around 1/3 in order to take into account inflation since the determination of the fees in 2016;
- The value-based fees of the Court of Appeal are separated from the value-based fees of the Court of First Instance by further adding 10% to the fees due to the Court of Appeal;
- Fees for requests and applications to the Court mostly related to administrative aspects are added (e.g. Application to enforce a decision, Application for suspensive effect);
- Notable increases relate to the Application to preserve evidence, for an order of inspection and for an order to freeze assets, which have been increased from currently 350EUR, respectively 1000EUR to a fixed fee of 5000EUR as well as a variable fee;
- The Guidelines for determination of the fees and recoverable costs are updated and include the determination of thevariable amounts for an application for interim relief, for freezing orders and to preserve evidence;
- In order to absorb the impact of the fee amendments on SMEs, the general reduction of fees for these entities has been increased from 40% to 50%.
The amendments will apply to all actions, requests and applications filed as from January 1st, 2026.
Thus, in case you plan to bring any actions to the UPC with benefiting from the current fee level, this has to be accomplished at the latest on December 31, 2025.