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.
Summer is here and the anticipated (but not yet actually arrived in the author’s personal experience) slow-down in activity may provide many Kluwer Patent Blog readers with the chance to draw breath and catch up on the latest UPC developments. But how well do you know the UPC? Could you list the location of all…
Since the dismissal by the Court of Justice of the European Union of Spain’s actions on 5 May 2015 a number of positive decisions are coming from the unitary patent / UPC scene: 1) By the end of May, Italy had announced to be willing to become a “unitary patent member state”. Last week the…
The Dutch draft legislation to implement the Unitary Patent Package in the Netherlands includes an interesting ‘safety net’ provision. If registration of unitary effect of a European patent is rejected by the EPO and this is confirmed by the UPC (as the case may be), there will be a possibility to validate the patent in…
Spain will not change its mind and join the Unitary Patent package, now that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has dismissed its legal challenges of the patent package, laid out in the EU Regulations 1257/2012 and 1260/2012 and the UPC Agreement. This is the expectation of the Confederation of Employers and…
Concerns that inexperienced judges will do unpredictable or crazy things at the Unified Patent Court are exaggerated, according to Bird & Bird partner Wouter Pors. Last month he gave a lecture to future UPC judges at the Budapest Training Centre as part of a week of training on the issue of infringement. He wrote this…
The €80 opt-out fee for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) as proposed by the Preparatory Committee will be a very heavy burden for hard-pressed patent departments. They are being asked to pay a significant fee for NOT using the new system. ’How perverse can this be?’ says Bristows partner Alan Johnson in answer to questions…
In an important change of position and influenced by the CJEU’s rejection of the Spanish challenge, Italy has announced it wants to join the enhanced cooperation within the European Union to create the Unitary Patent. This has been reported by various sources. According to the website of the Società Italiana Brevetti (SIB), Undersecretary Simona Vicari…
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…
As announced by the Kluwer UPC News blogger earlier today, this morning the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) published its two judgments in cases C-146/13 and C-147/13 where, as expected, it has dismissed the nullity actions filed by the Kingdom of Spain (“Spain”) against Council Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012 (unitary patent) and…
The European Court of Justice (CJEU) has just rejected Spain’s challenge of the Regulations No 1260/2012 and No 1257/2012. The eagerly awaited decision in the cases C-146/13 and C-147/13, implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection, means an important obstacle for the creation of the Unified Patent Court and the Unitary…
