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 surprising request by the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) to the German President to wait with his executing of the UPC ratification law, pending the outcome of a – heretofore unknown – constitutional complaint, has made many people wonder what is behind this constitutional complaint and on which alleged violations of the German Basic…
Estonia has ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement. According to the website of the European Council, it completed the ratification formalities on 1 August 2017. Estonia joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden as one of the thirteen countries who have completed their ratification processes. Ratification by…
The UPC IT team has called on business and service providers to provide information about how they want to integrate their systems with the case management system (CMS) of the UPC, and what services they plan to provide their clients. ‘As an initial step the team would like to hear from those whose responsibility it…
UPDATE with quotes of the press conference of Michel Barnier at the bottom of this blogpost Will London’s pharmaceuticals and life sciences section of the Unified Patent Court have to be relocated post-Brexit? The EU will investigate this as part of the Brexit negotiations. This has been reported by ScienceBusiness.net. According to the website, the…
Preparations for the launch of the Unitary Patent system are progressing, despite the uncertainties and delays in the ratification process in Germany and the UK. The Case Management System (CMS) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) will be ready ‘as of August 2017 and until the opening of the Court’, and tailored to prepare for the…
Chairman Alexander Ramsay of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court regrets that a constitutional complaint has led to the suspension of the German ratification process of the UPC Agreement. In a message which was published on the committee’s website today, Ramsay states: ‘In Germany another layer of complexity has been added due to…
By Alan Johnson and Luke Maunder, Bristows There is a lot of talk about the consequences of an ineffective opt-out, but concentrating on this issue perhaps ignores a more basic one: can anyone even challenge an opt-out? For those who wish to delve into the depths of legal analysis, a treatise on the issue may…
Another significant delay – or even more substantial – trouble seems to be ahead of the Unitary Patent system, due to today’s decision of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) in Karlsruhe. The Bundesverfassungsgericht has requested the German President not to sign the bills already approved by Bundestag and Bundesrat on the ratification of the Unitary…
The previously announced target date for the entry into operation of the Unified Patent Court, envisaged for December 2017, cannot be maintained. This has been reported by the UPC Preparatory Committee. Today, the Committee announced that the timetable which was published last March, was ‘relying on the timely finalisation of national procedures concerning the ratification…
If the period of provisional application of the Unified Patent Court Agreement starts before the summer break, it is still possible that the Unitary Patent system launches this year. European Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska said this in a press conference after the meeting of the EU Competitiveness Council, 29 and 30 May 2017 in Brussels. Bienkowska…
