IP Market Intelligence

The UPC at Year Two: What IP Firms Should Be Doing Differently in Their BD

October 5, 2026 · 7 min read · LeadLex Editorial

The Unified Patent Court has been operational for over two years. The early predictions — about caseload, about forum-shopping, about plaintiff behavior, about the share of patents opting out — have substantially settled. The market is in a different shape than it was when the Court opened, and the IP firms that have adjusted their BD posture are pulling ahead of those that haven't.

This piece is a working summary of the BD implications, written for partners running European patent practice or building BD strategy around the unitary patent system.

It is not a primer on the UPC. It assumes the reader knows what unitary patents are, how the Court is structured, and what an opt-out is. It focuses on the second-order question: what does this change about how corporates choose European patent counsel, and what should an IP firm be doing differently as a result?

TL;DR

The UPC has changed how corporates buy European patent counsel. Concentration toward firms with credible UPC litigation capability has accelerated; firms without it are seeing their share of contentious work decline.
The opt-out decision is no longer the headline question — most opt-out decisions are made. The current questions corporates are asking: how to use unitary patents tactically, when to assert at the UPC versus national courts, how to defend, and how to manage a portfolio where some assets are at the UPC and some are not.
These questions create BD opportunities that look different from pre-UPC opportunities. Cross-divisional capability, multi-jurisdictional coordination, and credible litigation experience are now buying criteria in ways they weren't in 2022.
The firms that haven't adjusted their BD to this — still leading with prosecution-only positioning, still treating litigation as a separate vertical — are losing share at the strategic-counsel level.

What's actually changed in two years

The empirical observations from the first two years of UPC operation that matter for BD:

Caseload is real and material. The Court is hearing meaningful volumes of cases, with the German divisions (Munich, Düsseldorf, Mannheim) leading. Plaintiff behavior has not been as US-litigator-aggressive as some predicted, but the system is working as designed: faster than national courts, with cross-border injunctive effect, at higher cost than most national alternatives.

Forum-shopping is alive but constrained. Plaintiffs are choosing divisions for reasons (technology specialization, language, perceived speed), but the Court is operating with enough consistency that the forum-shopping dynamic looks more like a maturing system than a wild west.

Opt-out is no longer the conversation. Corporates made their opt-out decisions early. The strategic question now is not whether to opt out; it is how to manage the portfolio you have, given the opt-out decisions you made.

Concentration toward UPC-credible firms has accelerated. Corporates with material European patent portfolios are increasingly routing strategic and contentious work to firms with credible UPC litigation experience. Firms that built UPC capability early have captured share. Firms that haven't are running behind.

Cross-border coordination is the new ask. A modern European patent strategy spans the UPC, national courts of non-UPC member states (UK, Spain, Poland — depending on which states remain non-UPC at the time you're reading this), the EPO opposition system, and increasingly post-grant proceedings in the US (PTAB) and Asia. Coordinating across all of these requires a different kind of firm than a prosecution-led IP boutique was set up to be.

The BD implications

The strategic-counsel conversation has moved up

Pre-UPC, much of the European patent BD conversation was at the prosecution level: who's filing your patents, who's drafting your claims, who's managing your annuities. Those conversations still happen; they are no longer the headline.

The headline conversation is portfolio strategy. How is the corporate using unitary patents tactically? Where are they choosing classical European patents instead? Where are they litigating? Where are they expecting to be sued? How are they managing the cost and risk profile of UPC exposure?

This is a senior-partner conversation. The firms winning it are firms whose senior partners can speak credibly to portfolio strategy and to litigation, and across jurisdictions. The firms losing it are firms whose senior partners can only speak credibly to prosecution.

Litigation capability is now buying criteria for prosecution

This is the structural shift most underestimated by prosecution-led IP firms. Corporates now look at a European patent firm and ask: if this patent is opposed, who litigates it? If a competitor sues us on a related patent, who defends? If we want to assert at the UPC, who tries the case?

For full-service firms with strong patent litigation practices, this is a tailwind. For prosecution-led boutiques, it's a strategic question they cannot avoid: either build credible litigation capability, partner with firms that have it, or accept that the strategic-counsel conversation is leaving the firm.

Multi-jurisdictional coordination is a competitive differentiator

The corporate that's running a modern European patent strategy needs counsel who can coordinate across the UPC, national systems of non-UPC member states, the EPO opposition framework, the UK system (post-Brexit and outside the UPC), and the increasingly material US PTAB and Asian post-grant systems. Single-jurisdiction firms are operationally insufficient for this; the work is going to firms — or coordinated networks of firms — that can run the play.

This has a BD implication: a firm's ability to demonstrate coordination, not just claim it, is now part of the buying conversation. Case examples, named partners across jurisdictions, articulated processes for cross-border coordination — these matter.

Speed is a buying criterion now

The UPC is faster than national courts. Corporates have noticed. The cultural expectation around responsiveness has tightened correspondingly — for opposition responses, for UPC pleadings, for cross-border coordination. Firms that operate at pre-UPC pace lose mandates to firms that don't.

This is an operational point, not a marketing point, but it shows up in BD: the firm's reputation for speed, evidenced in references, becomes a buying criterion.

What this means for BD targeting

The BD priorities for an IP firm with European patent practice, in light of the above:

Corporates with significant UPC-litigated patents. These are the corporates rethinking their European panels right now. The signal sources: UPC docket filings, EPO opposition activity in technologies the corporate is active in, public statements about IP strategy.
Corporates that opted in heavily and are now learning what that means. Many corporates opted in to the unitary patent system more enthusiastically than turned out to be wise; they're now reassessing. A substantive conversation about portfolio rebalancing lands well.
Corporates whose IP function is changing leadership. As covered in In-House IP Counsel Moves Are the Best BD Signal — and the UPC-era version of the conversation is different. New Heads of IP at corporates with material European patents are reassessing their European panel through a UPC lens. The firms that show up with a UPC-aware framing get heard.
Corporates in technology areas with high UPC litigation density. Pharma, telecommunications, automotive, certain industrial sectors are seeing concentrated UPC activity. Corporates in those sectors are being forced to engage with the system whether they planned to or not.
Non-European corporates with European patent portfolios. US, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese corporates with material European patents are navigating the UPC from a distance; many feel underserved by their current European panels. The BD opportunity here is significant for firms that can coordinate intelligently across the US/Asia/Europe axis.

The substantive intelligence partners should be sending

The outreach that works on UPC-related triggers is substantive. Generic "we have UPC capability" outreach does not differentiate. The substance that does:

Analysis of a recent UPC decision in the corporate's technology area, with practical implications
Comparison of UPC outcomes versus national-court outcomes on equivalent issues
Cost analyses that take into account the actual experience of operating in the UPC for two years (not the pre-launch projections)
Cross-border coordination case studies — anonymized — that demonstrate how the firm has run multi-jurisdictional plays
Substantive thoughts on opt-out decisions corporates are revisiting

This kind of content is also pillar SEO content. If your firm is publishing it consistently — see AI for IP Business Development: How It Actually Works — the inbound BD signal also strengthens.

What to do if your firm hasn't adjusted

A short, honest diagnostic for managing partners running prosecution-led IP firms:

Can your senior partners speak credibly to UPC strategy in a 30-minute call with a Head of IP?
Does your firm have named partners — by name, by jurisdiction — who can litigate at the UPC?
Are you publishing substantive UPC content with any regularity?
Are your corporates routing strategic conversations to you, or to a litigation firm down the street?
Has your share of strategic-counsel work increased or decreased in the last 24 months?

If the answers are uncomfortable, the strategic question is whether to build the capability, partner for it, or accept a narrower competitive position. None of those is wrong, but the choice has to be made deliberately.

The BD posture follows from the strategic position. A firm that's chosen "prosecution-led, partner with litigation firms" has a different BD playbook from a firm that's chosen "full-service, build UPC capability internally." Both can work. Neither works on the BD playbook the firm was running in 2022.

FAQs

Has UPC caseload met early expectations?

Yes, in volume and operational pace. Plaintiff behavior has been somewhat more measured than some predicted, but the Court is functioning as designed and is now a serious forum for European patent disputes.

Has the opt-out share been stable?

Largely yes. The major opt-out decisions were made in the first opt-out window; the rate of new opt-outs has been moderate. Some corporates are revisiting opt-out decisions as their portfolio strategy matures, but the headline question has shifted.

Is the UPC a good forum for plaintiffs?

It depends on the technology, the patent quality, and the strategic objective. The UPC offers speed and cross-border effect; it also offers a faster path to revocation if the patent is weak. Plaintiff strategy has matured around when to use it and when to prefer national fora.

What's the cost profile relative to national litigation?

Higher on average for a single proceeding than a single national court action, lower if you would have litigated in multiple national courts to achieve equivalent geographic effect. The corporate's strategic objective drives the comparison.

Is the UPC reshaping patent prosecution decisions?

Yes, indirectly. Corporates are thinking earlier about how a patent will be enforced and where, and that thinking is influencing claim drafting, geographic strategy, and unitary-versus-classical decisions at the prosecution stage. A prosecution practice that doesn't engage with this is increasingly behind.