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 crucial decision of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) on Spain’s objections to the Unitary Patent Package will be delivered on 5 May 2015. The date was published on the CJEU’s website earlier this week. The decision could remove what is widely seen as the last major stumbling block for the creation of 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…
In a surprise move, the Italian Ministry of Economic Development made a formal call last week on stakeholders to share their view as to what Italy should do with the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and Unitary Patent (UP) system. Italy is the only European country which has signed the UPC Agreement, but has stayed out…
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…
