Publicity of proceedings before the Unified Patent Court

On 1 June 2023, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) opened its doors. One of the most discussed and debated topics during the first year of operation of the UPC has been the publicity of the proceedings. This article discusses (i) access requests by the public, and (ii) restricting access within the proceedings.The court has now handed down several decisions on access requests by the public. Different approaches were adopted by the Munich section of the central division and the Nordic-Baltic regional division. The order by the latter division was appealed and we now have guidelines from the Court of Appeal on how the rules should be interpreted.The UPC has also given several orders related to the protection of trade secrets and confidential information within the proceedings. The questions the court has had to deal with are far from easy. They require careful balancing of several interests, such as publicity and confidentiality as well as the right to a fair trial. The Hague local division held that access to certain documents could be restricted only to legal representatives (‘attorneys’ eyes only’), where the relevant party had waived its right to review the documents. Generally, however, the UPC has in its orders allowed at least one natural person from each party to review all documents, which follows the wording of the Rules of Procedure. The Court of Appeal is yet to rule on these questions.