January 2016: start of the so-called provisional period. October 2016: first cases taken. That may be a realistic timetable for the future Unified Patent Court, according to Kevin Mooney, chairman of the Committee that prepared the draft Rules of Procedure for the UPC. Kluwer IP Law spoke to Mooney about the progress of the Legal…

Cost reductions obtained by introducing the Unitary Patent package should not be nullified by the setting of renewal fees at a high level. This would amount to the patent offices ‘clawing back’ the savings obtained instead of passing them on to innovating businesses. Lucía Caudet, spokeswoman for the European Commission told this in an interview…

The Unitary Patent and the UPC in Practice Paul England (Taylor Wessing) described the infringement position under the UPC Agreement and the UP Regulation (1257/2012). He explained that there was concern that the UP Regulation infringement provisions would be referable to the CJEU which was seen as undesirable and these were replaced with Article 5(3). This…

Recently, a number of European IP law professors (and certain lawyers) signed a motion against the EU patent package. The motion mentions 29 signatories of which 13 originate from Belgium. The other signatories are located in France (5), Italy (4), UK (2), Suisse (1), Portugal (1), the Netherlands (1), Sweden (1) and Spain (1). The…

The European business sector and the European Commission have voiced concern about the level of the renewal fees for the Unitary Patent, as proposed by the European Patent Office (EPO). The two EPO proposals for the fee level, often designated as the ‘Top 4 model’ and ‘Top 5 model’ have been discussed on the Kluwer…