The institutional design of the European patent system will soon change significantly once the “Patent Package” will finally fully enter into force. As a consequence a new type of “unitary” patent protection and a new centralized, highly specialized court, the “Unified Patent Court” (hereinafter UPC) will be created. At many occasions, it has been noted that the success of the UPC will largely depend on “public trust” or more specifically the “trust of the patent user community” in the UPC. However, commentators who refer to the importance of trust in this context do not clarify what they mean by “trust”, nor do they disentangle the form, causes and potential of trust with respect to such a new, highly specialized court system.

The literature on trust within the context of judicial governance is rather limited. Although some research exists on public trust (trust of ordinary citizens) in courts and on trust between courts, we do not know to what extent and how trust based on expertise is relevant for the legitimacy and effectiveness of new judicial organizations in the context of a highly specialized legal regime like patent law.

The main objectives of this presentation are to present the set-up for a pilot study for empirical research by way of a survey amongst patent practitioners related to trust in the UPC, to receive feedback on the set-up of the pilot study and to explore opportunities for collaboration on this type of research.