The Unified Patent Court (UPC) is a planned future court common to EU Member States which participate in the Unitary Patent system, and it will be part of their judicial system. After a transitional period of 7 years or 14 years at most, it will have exclusive competence in respect of traditional European patents and European patents with unitary effect (Unitary Patents). The UPC is based on the Unified Patent Court Agreement. The Unitary Patent system and the UPC are planned to start functioning once certain ratification conditions have been fulfilled.
With less than 2 weeks to go before 1 June 2023, it was about time for the UPC to tie several loose ends and to clarify various questions before becoming (more or less) fully operative. Here is an overview of what I found to be the most interesting news. 1.) Seat of the 3rd Subdivision…
The Italian Government has agreed with France and Germany to set up a branch of the central division of the Unified Patent Court in Milan. This has been announced by the Italian ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation. According to a press release, the agreement will be submitted to the other UP member states…
The Unified Patent Court has published an update on the problems with the CMS and the opting out of patents of the jurisdiction of the court before the starting date of 1 June 2023. On its website, the UPC writes: ‘Dear users of the UPC Case Management System, As you may have experienced, the CMS…
The Unified Patent Court has formally announced that, for the time being, competencies which were originally assigned to the London seat of the UPC central division, will be divided between Munich and Paris. Remarkably, there is no mention of Milan as third seat of the central division. Only two months ago, a spokesperson for the…
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…
‘The patent community lives today after many dark years in the sunrise period in which owners of patents have to decide if after June 1st, they want to be on the sunny beaches of the UPC or prefer to live another 7 or 14 years in the dark forests of national patent litigation.’ Those were…
The Unified Patent Court has announced that starting 29 May 2023 external users will be able to practice entry into force (EIF) functionalities on a dedicated CMS platform. The environment will be the same as the current sunrise practice CERUS, on which the EIF functionalities will be activated. There is no end date for the…
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 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…
