Less than three weeks before the planned opening of the Unified Patent Court, a message has been published on its website as a reaction to problems with the content management system, which apparently isn’t able to cope with the growing inflow of opt-outs. Proprietors who don’t want their patents to fall under the UPC need…

Around 200 judges, patent litigators, patent attorneys, other patent experts, representatives of scientific institutions and companies, government officials, The Hague mayor Jan van Zanen and Dutch minister of Economic Affairs and Climate, Micky Adriaansens, attended the opening ceremony of the Dutch local division of the Unified Patent Court today in The Hague. Minister Adriaansens stressed…

In an earlier post I explained the issues that the proposed EU Regulation on SEPs intends to address, and why neither the market nor the courts solve them. Here, I discuss three points of critique brought against the Proposal: that it would reduce innovation incentives; that a family-level essentiality assessment would be too imprecise; and…

The Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) Regulation Proposal also known as the IP Action Plan formally issued by the European Commission today suggests groundbreaking changes to the standard essential patent landscape as we know it. The SEPs Regulation Proposal indicates the European Commission’s desire to establish four major requirements for SEPs holders and implementers. These are…

After years of preparation, the European Union’s draft legislation for a sweeping reform of the existing legal regime on supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), which includes the establishment of a centralized SPC filing and examination procedure as well as the introduction of a unitary SPC, has finally been published today on April 27, 2023. This draft…

The Unified Patent Court has designated the presiding judges of the central, local and regional divisions, as well as presiding judges of the relevant panels of the Court. By decision of the UPC’s presidium, which was published yesterday, the following judges were designated: Central division PARIS: Ms Florence Butin Central division MUNICH section: Ms Ulrike…

The start of the Unitary Patent system ‘is a big event with big economic consequence. Europe could reconstitute their economic relevance’ around it, says John White, Special Counsel of law firm Harness IP in the US. In an interview he told Kluwer IP Law not everybody seems aware yet about the upcoming game changer, but…

The European Commission’s recently leaked Proposal for a Regulation on standard-essential patents (SEPs), summarized here by Enrico Bonadio and Dyuti Pandya, establishes a framework for transparent SEP licensing. Some have criticized the proposal, claiming among other things that it is unnecessary, harmful to innovation, and difficult to implement. Much of this critique is unjustified. More…