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After a reasonable delay the signing ceremony for the agreement on the unified patent court took place today (19 February 2013).
As alluded to in the press release a total of 24 member states signed the agreement, including Italy.
The following 24 countries have therefore signed the agreement:
Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, United Kingdom
Poland, Spain and Bulgaria have not yet signed though Bulgaria is expected to sign in the coming days.
Mark Richardson 19 February 2013
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What does it mean that Italy also signed?
As well as signing the UPC agreement, the signatories need to ratify it. If Italy don’t ratify it then their signature won’t change how things happen in Italy.
If they do ratify the agreement (along with the others required for the agreement to come into effect) then it would appear that the UPC will have competence over EP(IT) patents.
Italy of course have not joined in with the two regulations that also form part of the unitary patent package. One of these regulations covers translations and so for Italy, presumably, the current requirements in respect of translation of the specification of granted patents will remain the same.
Watch the signing ceremony at http://video.consilium.europa.eu/webcast.aspx?ticket=775-982-12538 . Bulgaria and Poland don’t sign – Spain doesn’t even turn up. What happened with Austria? (46.30 on videorecording). The Austrian delegate doesn’t sign, but turns the book round and shows it to the camera. Had Austria signed it in advance?
Before everyone sat down at the table someone signed the agreement. It wasn’t clear who this was but we understood it was the Austrian delegate (but not the same person who was later sitting in the Austria position round the table). I think therefore that the action of showing it to the camera was just to confirm that they’d already signed it.
Were France there? I heard on the audio that they’d signed earlier in the day.
Just watched the video again. The France chair was empty and they skipped straight to Italy so it appears France did sign earlier in the day.
[…] 19 February 2013 at a signing ceremony in Brussels a total of 24 out of a possible 27 countries signed the unified patent court agreement (UPC agreement). As expected below, Poland decided not to sign the agreement. They were joined by […]
[…] noted in an earlier post the agreement on the unified patent court (UPC) was signed by 24 member states on 19 February […]