On Friday 22 January 2016, the annual ERA (Academy of European Law) conference on the Unitary Patent took place in Brussels. Regarding the agreement reached on the renewal fees, Clemens Heusch, head of European litigation at Nokia, explained that although Nokia currently has more than 30,000 (!) patent families in its patent portfolio, he finds…

In March 2015 the European Patent Office presented two proposals to the Select Committee for the level of renewal fees of the future Unitary Patent. The proposals were presented as the “Top 4” and “Top 5” models, i.e. equivalent to the national renewal fees of the 4, respectively 5 Member States where European patents are…

The European patent community and especially the people involved in the preparation of the Unified Patent Court were stirred up in March 2015 by an action launched before the Belgian Constitutional Court. On 10 March 2015 the Belgian non for profit association ESOMA (European Software Market Association) had launched a nullity action against the Belgian…

Sighs of relief… sighs of disappointment… Depending on your position towards the unitary patent package, one of the aforementioned sighs was heaved on Tuesday, when the CJEU dismissed the annulment actions of Spain against the Council Regulation 1257/2012 (“Unitary Patent Regulation”) and Council Regulation 1260/2012 (“Translation Regulation”) of the so-called unitary patent package. Irrespective of…

Recently, a number of European IP law professors (and certain lawyers) signed a motion against the EU patent package. The motion mentions 29 signatories of which 13 originate from Belgium. The other signatories are located in France (5), Italy (4), UK (2), Suisse (1), Portugal (1), the Netherlands (1), Sweden (1) and Spain (1). The…