Lodline's intellectual property and UPC practice defines its scope, its fixed-price products and how a matter runs: patent prosecution support, opposition and revocation strategy, opt-out decisions for European patents, and Unified Patent Court litigation support for clients connected to Sweden, delivered either as scoped fixed-price products or as assessment engagements once the underlying facts are known.
How it works in practice
This page is the entry point to everything Lodline publishes on intellectual property and the Unified Patent Court. The pages beneath it are organised around three questions that a patent holder, a licensee or in-house counsel actually asks before picking up the phone: what the practice covers, what can be bought as a fixed-price product without opening a full file, and what happens once a matter is opened. Read in that order, the pages answer more than any single article can on its own. For how intellectual property sits alongside contracts, disputes and compliance work, see the wider set of Lodline's practices.
The Unified Patent Court changed the calculus for anyone holding a European patent with effect in Sweden. A single infringement or revocation action can now reach several jurisdictions at once, and the choice of forum, opt-out included, is frequently the one decision that shapes everything downstream. That is why this hub separates the practice into three distinct layers rather than one long service description: what is in scope, what is pre-packaged as a fixed-price product, and what a matter looks like once it starts moving through the practice.
Most clients arriving at this practice fall into one of three groups. The first is a Swedish company, or a Swedish subsidiary of a foreign group, holding European patents that need an opt-out decision before the transitional window closes. The second is a licensor or licensee dealing with an opposition or revocation filed against a patent that is central to a commercial relationship. The third is in-house counsel preparing a portfolio for financing, a sale or an internal audit and needing a clear view of what is protected, what is contested and what is exposed to a lapsed licence or an unresolved dispute.
Who the practice serves
The practice is built for parties who already understand that a decision has to be made, not for parties who need the underlying value of a patent explained to them from scratch. Typical instructions come from general counsel at manufacturing or life-sciences groups with a Swedish footprint, from licensing teams managing a portfolio that spans several European countries, and from boards preparing for a transaction where intellectual property is a material asset on either side of the table. None of that requires the client to be Swedish; it requires the patent, the licence or the dispute to touch Sweden in some way, through registration, through a licensee, through a manufacturing site or through a counterparty domiciled here.
Scope of work
Four types of instruction sit under this practice. Prosecution support covers advice on filing strategy, claim scope and the interaction between a national filing, a European patent and, where relevant, a European patent with unitary effect: Lodline advises on strategy and coordinates with the patent attorneys who handle the technical filing itself, rather than filing applications directly. Opposition and revocation work covers defending or attacking a granted patent, building the factual record around it and coordinating expert evidence where the dispute turns on a technical fact rather than a legal interpretation. UPC-related work covers the opt-out decision itself, the consequences of getting it wrong, and support in framing a forum strategy once a dispute is live, working alongside local counsel and representatives admitted to appear before the court. Portfolio review covers a structured read of a patent estate before a financing round, a sale or an internal audit, flagging what is protected, what is contested, what depends on a licence that could lapse, and what a counterparty is likely to raise in due diligence.
What is not in scope is drafting patent claims from a blank page or acting as the filing agent of record before a patent office. Those tasks sit with patent attorneys; this practice sits alongside them, on the commercial and dispute side of the same patent, not on the drafting side.
Patent portfolios in financing and transactions
A portfolio review under this practice is never a general audit run out of curiosity about what a company owns. It is built around a specific event: a financing round where a lender wants comfort that the intellectual property backing a valuation is actually enforceable, a sale where the buyer's counsel will test every filing date and every licence term, or an internal audit triggered by a change of management. The output is a working list of what is solid, what is contested, and what is exposed, ranked by how much it could move the number on the table, not a exhaustive inventory of every filing a company has ever made. Where a transaction is already under negotiation, this review sits close to the work described on the contracts side of the firm, particularly where a counterparty's due diligence findings on intellectual property start to move price.
Fixed-price products
Not every question in this area needs an open engagement. Some questions have a defined input, a defined output and a price that does not move once the input is confirmed. The clearest example is the opt-out decision product: a client supplies the patent family and the commercial context, and receives a written recommendation on whether to opt a given European patent out of the Unified Patent Court's jurisdiction, together with the reasoning behind it. The same fixed-price logic applies to a handful of other narrowly defined questions in this practice, wherever the question can be answered from documents the client already holds, without further investigation of contested facts.
A fixed-price product is not a substitute for advice on a live dispute. It answers one question, cleanly, on a fixed timeline, and it is priced accordingly. The moment the answer depends on facts that are not yet established, on contested testimony, or on a negotiation with a counterparty, the work moves into an assessment engagement instead, scoped and priced against that specific matter rather than against a catalogue price.
What a written recommendation includes
Whether the work is delivered as a fixed-price product or as an assessment, the output takes the same form: a written recommendation that names the decision to be made, sets out the reasoning behind it in terms a board or a licensing counterpart can follow without a legal background, and states plainly what happens if no decision is made at all. It does not hedge the recommendation into a menu of options with no view attached, because a client who already has the facts does not need a menu, they need a position they can act on or push back against.
How a matter runs
A matter in this practice moves through the same stages regardless of whether it starts as a fixed-price product or as an assessment.
| Stage | What happens | What can go wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Intake | Confirm the decision to be made and whether a deadline is already running | The deadline check gets skipped because the client is still deciding whether to engage |
| Scoping | Confirm fixed-price fit, or define documents needed for an assessment price | Scoping starts before the deadline is confirmed, wasting the time available |
| Delivery | Written recommendation, filing strategy or litigation position | Recommendation is delivered too late to act on it |
| Follow-up | Adjust the position if the counterparty responds or new facts surface | No plan exists for what happens if the deadline is extended or challenged |
The stage that most often gets skipped is the deadline check at intake. Opt-out windows, opposition periods and revocation deadlines do not extend themselves because a client is still deciding whether to instruct counsel, and a matter that arrives after a deadline has closed has fewer options than one that arrives before it.
Cross-border patent holders
Sweden rarely sits at the centre of a patent dispute on its own. A European patent typically covers several designated states, a licensee may be incorporated outside Sweden, and an opposition can be filed by a competitor with no Swedish presence at all. Where the patent holder, the licensee or the opposing party sits outside Sweden, three things change in practice: service of documents takes longer and needs to be planned for rather than assumed, coordination with counsel or patent attorneys in the other relevant jurisdictions becomes part of the workplan rather than an afterthought, and the choice between a national forum and the Unified Patent Court has to account for where enforcement will actually be needed, not only where the dispute happens to start. A foreign parent company instructing on behalf of a Swedish subsidiary should expect the intake stage to run longer for exactly this reason, since the facts that matter are often held in a different jurisdiction from the one where the decision has to be made.
None of that changes the fixed-price products on offer; it changes how long the assessment stage takes and what documents are needed before a recommendation can be given.
Where self-help stops
A client can, and usually should, do some of this work internally before instructing anyone. Identifying which patents in a portfolio are approaching an opt-out deadline is a filing-date exercise that an in-house team can run from its own records. Flagging that a competitor's patent might be vulnerable to a validity challenge is a technical first step, not a legal one. What internal teams generally cannot do reliably on their own is weigh the consequences of an opt-out decision once it is made, because under the law as it currently stands that choice locks in a forum for the life of the patent in a way that is not easily reversed, and getting it wrong is a structural problem, not a paperwork one. The same is true of deciding whether to litigate before the Unified Patent Court or a national court once a dispute is already live: the decision affects every other patent in the same family, not only the one in dispute.
What the practice does not cover
This practice does not draft patent applications, does not act as the agent of record before the European Patent Office or the Swedish patent office, and does not appear before the Unified Patent Court as the client's litigation representative in its own right, that role sits with representatives formally admitted before the court, whom this practice works alongside. It also does not offer a general intellectual property audit disconnected from a specific decision: a portfolio review here is always built around a transaction, a financing round or a dispute that makes the review necessary.
What to have ready before the first call
- The patent family or families in question, with filing and grant dates.
- Any licence agreements tied to those patents, including termination and assignment clauses.
- Correspondence already received from a counterparty, an opponent, or the patent office.
- Confirmation of any deadline already running, and the date it falls due.
- A short statement of what commercial outcome depends on the decision.
A call that starts with these five items in hand moves straight to scoping. A call that starts without them spends its first stretch reconstructing facts that a client's own files already hold.
What does Lodline's intellectual property and UPC practice cover?
The practice covers prosecution strategy support, opposition and revocation defence, Unified Patent Court forum and opt-out decisions, and portfolio review tied to a transaction. A question outside those four categories is either out of scope for this practice or belongs with a different one, most often contracts or disputes.
When does a fixed-price product make sense instead of an assessment?
A fixed-price product fits when the question is narrow, the facts are already documented, and the answer does not depend on a negotiation with a third party, the clearest example being an opt-out decision for a specific patent family. An assessment fits once a counterparty is involved, once facts are contested, or once the answer depends on strategy across a whole portfolio rather than one filing.
How does a UPC-related matter typically start?
Most matters start with a deadline: an opt-out window closing, an opposition period running, or a revocation action already filed against a patent the client relies on commercially. The starting point is an intake conversation that confirms the deadline, the documents already available, and whether the question fits a fixed-price product or needs a scoped assessment before a price can be quoted.
What to do next
Everything above can be worked through with documents a client already holds: patent family records, licence terms, correspondence with a counterparty. Self-help stops at the point where a decision has to be made that cannot be undone, most obviously an opt-out election, or where the facts are contested rather than merely unclear. That is the point where an assessment call earns its cost: it turns a portfolio and a deadline into a specific written recommendation that a board or a licensing partner can act on, rather than a set of options with no view attached.
For a single, defined question with documents already in hand, the opt-out decision product is the fastest route to a written answer at a fixed price. For anything wider, start with an assessment call: bring the patent family, the deadline and the commercial context, and the first conversation will confirm whether the matter fits a fixed-price product or needs to be scoped as an engagement.