Inventive Step in Europe:
    Alignment and Divergence
​​​​​​​across the EPO, UPC, and German Patent and Trademark Office

Securing and enforcing patent rights in Europe requires an understanding of how different authorities assess inventive step. Although the legal requirement is essentially the same—the invention must not have been obvious to the person skilled in the art—the methodology applied by the European Patent Office (EPO), the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) differs in important respects.