Unified Patent Court UPC to require Strong Authentication by electronic signatures

Are you one of those tech guys for whom UPC is a Unified Parallel C extension of the C programming language for computing on large-scale parallel machines? Then you don’t need to read any further. However, if you think of UPC as the Unified Patent Court of the EU, you might have also thought about their CMS and “Strong Authentication”. This article is the right place to learn about the requirements of the electronic case management system of the UPC. And what our products can do for it.

UPC: A better patent system for Europe

The European patent system will be supplemented and strengthened. Through unitary patents, for which in future a single application to the European Patent Office will suffice and with which one will obtain patent protection in up to 25 EU member states. The unitary patents and the newly created Unified Patent Court will ensure that patent procedures, patent protection and litigation will become simpler and more cost-efficient – throughout Europe.

The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is expected to become operational in June 2023. Currently, 17 EU member states have committed to participate in the UPC from the beginning. Austria included.

Expensive legal disputes that have to be conducted in parallel in different countries and the risk of a lack of legal certainty should thus be a thing of the past.

UPC/EPG: Strong Authentication enhances security

Wherever legal certainty is an issue, it is also a matter of increased technical security precautions. Obviously, the UPC therefore operates an electronic case management system (CMS) in which all documents must be uploaded to ensure optimum data protection and maximum data security.

It is equally self-evident that a CMS of this type cannot be entered simply with a username and password. Strict authentication requirements apply.

Patent Attorneys, IP-Lawyers: feel free to ask

Registration and access are granted only after Strong Authentication. This means that each participant needs a personal login certificate, and may use a qualified signature certificate to sign the documents.

The provisional applicability of the EPG has already started in January 2022, opt-out requests can already be submitted via the CMS since beginning the sunrise period, so before the actual start of work of the UPC. That’s why GLOBALTRUST as a frontrunner already serves an impressive customer base from the international IP community with its user-friendly all-in-one solution.

Do you really need 2 certificates? Yes!

Each person requires two certificates. One mandatory for login purposes and one for signature if desired. It is not allowed to combine both functions in one certificate. Be sure to contact us beforehand: We will advise you and recommend the appropriate tools.

• The certificate for your login: GLOBALTRUST ADVANCED AATL TOKEN – Certificates for your reliable identification – the correctness of all information is guaranteed.
• The certificate for your signature: TRUST2GO®. Sign digitally with our qualified cloud signature – in accordance with the EU eIDAS regulation.

If you are interested, please leave a message asking for a UPC certificate Bundle.  We will reach out to you with further guidance.

Do you have to be on site for the certificate issue? No!

As a Qualified Trust Service Provider (QTSP), we are obliged to verify the identity of our customers.

However, you do not necessarily have to be on site for the identity verification. The UPC also grants an “online identification” via videoident procedure. Online authentication via video call works very simply and is a highly secure, digital alternative. You don’t need an appointment – just a few minutes of your precious time.

• More about video identification: Here
• Find out which countries and ID documents we support Here

For some destination countries, we also offer postal identification procedure to establish your identity. In this case, the identity check takes a few days longer.

Citizenship, residence, current location?

None of this is relevant for the issuance of the certificates. Our certificates according to the eIDAS regulation are also not limited to EU citizens. Your place of residence does not matter, as long as you have an Internet connection there. Video identification supports ID documents from a good 100 countries.

Smartcards or tokens?

The UPC decidedly excludes the possibility to use existing smartcards for the European Patent Office. You will receive a USB token with login certificate from us.

For legally valid electronic signing, however, we use a remote signature according to recital 51 eIDAS.

Trust is good …

… but control is better. Nobody knows that better than we do. So if you want to check whether GLOBALTRUST fulfills all requirements of the UPC we have some more information and links for you.

The Unified Patent Court refers to the EU Trust List and requires the following for the signature:

“The root certificate of the CA needs to be “CA/QC” and “granted”. In addition, the “key field” parameter must have the value Digital Signature.”

Our trust list entry can be found here:
https://esignature.ec.europa.eu/efda/tl-browser/#/screen/tl/AT/5

The following test site is also available for the login certificate:
https://auth-cerus.unified-patent-court.org/test-smart-card

Contact us – we will be happy to provide you with more information on how you can best meet the requirements of the UPC’s electronic case management system.