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.
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…
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…
Finland became the ninth country to ratify the UPC Agreement when President Sauli Niinistö signed the law on its ratification on 8th of January 2016. The Parliament approved the ratification in December 2015, following the Judiciary Committee’s report on the 6th of November 2015 and the Constitutional Committee’s report on the 17th of November 2015,…
The procedure to select judges for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will start within two months. An announcement and an online application form will be published on the UPC website at the end of February or beginning of March 2016 at the latest. The 2013 call for ‘expressions of interest’ in becoming a judge and…
The German ratification of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement will most likely be postponed until September 2016 and be decisive for the Unitary Patent (UP) system to go live. Wouter Pors, partner of law firm Bird & Bird, has said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law. Thirteen ratifications are needed for the…
Will Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) profit from the new Unitary Patent (UP) system and the Unified Patent Court (UPC)? Although it was certainly the idea, observers have disputed this and particularly warned that litigation under the new system exposes SMEs to enormous risks. There is now formal recognition they have a point: the European…
The creation of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) means that there will finally be a judiciary to control the very strong executive power of the European patent system, the European Patent Office, Jens Schovsbo, Professor at the Centre for Information and Innovation Law of the University of Copenhagen, told Kluwer IP Law in an interview. According…
Prompted by the upcoming Unitary Patent (UP) and Unified Patent Court (UPC), a group of European patent attorneys decided in 2013 to create the European Patent Litigators Association (EPLIT), ‘promoting fair patent litigation in Europe’. Kluwer IP Law spoke to its president, Koen Bijvank. ‘It is unpredictable how the market for patent litigation will change…
The countdown to the new Unitary Patent system has begun. The Unified Patent Court is expected to open its doors at the start of 2017, preceded by a provisional phase in 2016 for the practical set up of the Court and the recruitment of judges and staff. Not only European patent specialists are preparing, companies…
The lack of provisions on Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs) is seen as a major flaw in the new Unitary Patent (UP) system. Initiatives have been taken to address this issue and recently the European Commission put it on its action list. Why doesn’t the UP Regulation include a provision for SPCs? Anja Lunze, attorney at…
