No fee for requesting opt-out

The Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court has recently published a new suggestion regarding the fee for opting out, in which the fee will be 0 EUR, instead of the previous suggestion of 80 EUR.

The fee for requesting opt-out has been discussed for a while, and consultation responses have indicated that the fee should either be removed or lowered from the suggested 80 EUR level. Since the Case Management System will allow for a more or less automated opt-out process (and withdrawal of the opt-out), and the administration burden thus will rest almost entirely with the applicant, the Preparatory Committee is of the opinion that the cost of administering the payment of the fees would not be proportionate to the administrative cost for handling the opt-out request.

The Preparatory Committee also published the pdf: “Guidelines for the calculation of Court fees and Recoverable cost“