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.
This week the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court gathered at the Finnish Permanent Representation to the European Union for their sixth meeting. At this meeting the Committee approved a shortlist of suitable candidate judges that have the potential to become a judge of the UPC. As you know, the UPC will need both…
1 Introduction Reports that say there’s — that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But…
At the Kluwer Patent Blog we keep our fingers on the pulse of patent litigation. With their trained fingertips our contributors measure the heart rate of new case law and developments from their various countries. When the normal and regular rhythm changes to an irregular pulse, they are ready to post their findings on this…
On 2 April 2014 the parliamentary committee Foreign Affairs of the Belgian House of Representatives voted in favor of the ratification of the UPC agreement. The vote in plenary session is planned for the week of 22 April 2014, but should be no more than a formality. This means that after Austria and France, Belgium…
On Friday, 21 February 2014, the Danish Government announced its plans to establish a local division of the UPC in Copenhagen if the Danish referendum on Denmark’s accession to the UPC should turn out positive. The decision is the result of a political agreement with almost all Danish parties represented in parliament and is widely…
UPC aficionados will be interested to learn that the 16th draft of the Rules of Procedure was unveiled yesterday. Readers will remember that the previous draft was published on 31 May 2013. Since then, the Drafting Committee has been working on a new draft that may – or may not – accommodate the comments received…
In our previous blog Opting out and Opting in we discussed some of the questions regarding the transitional regime under the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA). Due to its importance and ambiguity this provision continues to be a source of considerable controversy, so much so that the Preparatory Committee, which is tasked with preparing the…
As readers of this blog may recall, the Danish government has for some time attempted to persuade a 5/6 majoirity of the Danish parliament to agree to cast the vote in favour of Danish accession to the UPC. Two political parties represented in the Danish parliament have, however, remained staunch opponents of Denmark joining the…
In a recent decision (case no. 4A_142/2013), the Swiss Federal Supreme Court had to decide whether one of the non-permanent judges of the Swiss Federal Patent Court, a Swiss patent attorney, was obliged to recuse himself due to activities of one of his colleagues in his patent law firm in connection with a trademark matter…
My last blog, published on 14 November 2013, mentioned that on the closing date (15 November 2013) set to send expressions of interest for persons wishing to be considered candidate Judges at the Unified Patent Court (“UPC”), only Austrian nationals would fulfil the conditions set by the Preparatory Committee, for only Austria had ratified the…
