Hopefully the United Kingdon won’t jeopardize the Unitary Patent project with a vote to withdraw the European Union, says Jane Lambert, barrister from 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square in London. ‘However, it could still continue without us’, Lambert told Kluwer IP Law in an interview. Lambert, who recently published a series of articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) on the…
There was a time where appeal before the EPO could be used to revisit anything that went wrong or was omitted in opposition proceedings. Since 2003, when the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) were amended, the situation has changed. The Boards of Appeal, confronted with an increasing workload and with cases…
In our blog of 31 October 2013 (“Groucho Marx, fairness and the opting-out fee“) we explained that Groucho Marx once sent a telegram to the Friar’s Club of Beverly Hills with the following text: “Please accept my resignation. I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member.”…
There will be no fee to opt out of the jurisdiction of the future Unified Patent Court (UPC). It had already been rumored for some time, but it has now been confirmed with the publication of the ‘Rules on UPC Court Fees and Recoverable Costs’. The document was agreed on in a meeting of the…
The most sensible option for the UK is to postpone the ratification of the UPC Agreement until the ‘Brexit’ referendum of 23 June 2016 has been held, according to Luke McDonagh, Lecturer in IP Law at City University London. Mc Donagh told Kluwer IP Law there is nervousness in the ‘very pro-EU IP Community in…
The Federal Ministry of Justice of Germany has presented a first draft bill on the ratification of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement. It is accompanied by a draft bill to implement the Unitary Patent (UP) system at the national level. A spokesman of the German Ministry of Justice explained to Kluwer IP Law that…
Alexander Ramsey is the chairman of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC). He has set the ambitious goal to finish his work by June 2016 with a view to the UPC opening early 2017. Court fees, recruitment and training of judges and fine-tuning of the IT-system are just a few of the…
The big picture for the Unitary Patent (UP) and the Unified Patent Court (UPC) may be clear for the patent attorneys, lawyers and other experts who will soon have to deal with the new European patent system. However, there’ll be many surprises in the details. During the second day of the Unitary Patent Package Conference,…
We are ready, are you? The ‘last steps’ towards the introduction of the Unitary Patent (UP) system were a recurring theme on the first day of the Unitary Patent Package Conference in Amsterdam. A lot of experts and specialists who are closely involved in the creation of the UP and the Unified Patent Court (UPC)…
The European Commission has taken the first step towards creating a European Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC). A Call for Tender for a ‘Study on the legal aspects of the supplementary protection certificates in EU’ was published last month. The deadline for the Call for Tender is 4 February 2016. After signing a contract, the study…
