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European Patent Litigation Certificate (Draft Paper now online)
Last week IPcopy wrote about a draft paper from the legal working group of the preparatory committee that discusses the European Patent Litigation Certificate and the other “appropriate qualifications” that are mentioned under Article 48(2) of the Unified Patent Court Agreement and are required for EPAs to have rights of representation at the UPC.
At the time of writing last week’s article the draft paper was not online but this changed over the weekend when the Twitter user @EPpatent posted a link to a Google docs copy of the paper. The draft paper can be found in our article European Patent Litigation Certificate (& other appropriate qualifications) which has been updated.
While you are checking out the draft paper, take a look at some of the comments on the earlier post, especially the one from IP Frog!
Mark Richardson 10 March 2014
16th draft of Rules of Procedure of Unified Patent Court
The 16th draft of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court has been published and can be found here (16th draft of Rules of Procedure). Helpfully the latest draft has been prepared as a marked-up document which means the amendments are easy to spot.
There’s a fair amount of red lined comments in this draft which IPcopy will take some time to digest. However, a few points of interest are noted below.
Nordic Baltic Regional Division Established & Brussels I Regulation Amendments
A couple of unitary patent news updates courtesy of Nick Cunningham and Michael Carter at Wragge & Co. relating to the signing of the Nordic Baltic regional division of the Unified Patent Court and the approval of the amendments to the Brussels I regulation.
What became of the Trunki? Magmatic v PMS at appeal
Back in September we reported on the result of the Magmatic v PMS case in which the Trunki faced off against the Kiddee Case at the High Court before the Hon. Mr Justice Arnold. At the High Court, PMS’s Kiddee case was found to infringe Magmatic’s Community Registered Design (CRD) for the Trunki.
However, PMS were given leave to appeal the case, and in January the case was heard in the Appeal Court before Lord Justice Moses, Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Kitchin. The judgement has just been made available, and reveals that the Appeal Court reversed the High Court’s judgement, and ruled that the Kiddee case did not, in fact, create the same overall impression as Magmatic’s CRD, and so did not infringe. IPcopy takes you for another ride through the suitcase-animal fair…
European Patent Litigation Certificate (& other appropriate qualifications)
[Note: see also the post on 18 June 2014 relating to the public consultation for the EPLC proposals. Closing date is 25 July 2014. ipcopymark 18 June 2014]
Back in January this year CIPA and the IPO held a joint open meeting to discuss the issue of representation before the Unified Patent Court. This is a very important topic for patent attorneys and the CIPA/IPO meeting explored whether UK patent attorneys (who are EPAs) would have rights of representation at the UPC or whether additional qualifications would be necessary. IPcopy’s reports on this meeting are at the following links – Part I and Part II.
Last week an article went up on the Law Society Gazette asking “Who can act in European patents?” and reference was made in this article to a draft paper that has recently been produced by the legal working group of the preparatory committee. IPcopy had not seen this paper (or even heard of its existence) but the author of the Law Society article was kind enough to provide us with a copy. [Update: a copy of the draft paper has now appeared online and can be accessed here. 10/3/14]
In our view, if you are a European Patent Attorney, then this report does not make for happy reading. If the views expressed in the CIPA/IPO meeting are anything to go by then this seems especially the case if you are an EPA and UK patent attorney. IPcopy summarises the main points of the draft paper below. (more…)
Location, Location, Location (of divisions of the Unified Patent Court)
Along with all the other preparations that are required to implement the unitary patent package in the various participating member states, rumblings are often heard regarding the potential location of the local and regional divisions of the Unified Patent Court. This week IPcopy has heard/seen material relating to a potential local division in Ireland and also the possible setting up of a regional “Nordic-Baltic” division in Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania (Thanks to reader Hans van de Heuvel for the heads up regarding the Nordic-Baltic news). (more…)
And then there were three? President Hollande signs off on ratification of UPC Agreement
Following the recent adoption of the Agreement of the Unified Patent Court by the French National Assembly comes news that the French President, François Hollande, has now promulgated the law by signing off on the text in Paris on 24th February 2014.
IP Hit or Miss? The Lego Movie
70s Lego Superman | Present Day Lego Superman
The Lego movie. Is. Awesome. And certainly much more fun than revising for the EQE pre-exam, which is what I probably should have been doing with my Saturday afternoon (here’s hoping the claim analysis section is all about co-operable building blocks). There are thrills; there are spills; there’s some beautifully poignant humour. It’s the Matrix meets Toy Story 3.
Enough advertising: the reason I get to write about the Lego Movie here is that there’s a delightful little patent sub-sub-sub-plot involving Lego Batman. Which gives me the perfect excuse to assess the IP reference for our IP Hit or Miss series, in the interests of IP education, you understand. The potential ‘spoilers’ are so minor as to be barely worthy of the word, but if you don’t want to see a few paraphrased words from the movie, you may wish to look away now.
IP in the Space Sector
Despite having had an interest in all things extra-terrestrial from an early age, I’ve been regularly dumb-struck by innovations in space-related technology both upstream (things in space or launching them there) and downstream (things down here using technology or data from space). Planet Labs are deploying a constellation of 28 tiny imaging satellites, each costing a fraction of the price of typical commercial satellites, promising near-global, daily imaging. Brokers like Spaceflight Services put these and other small satellites into orbit by squeezing them into the space inside launch vehicles around larger satellites. Terra Recovery image landfill sites from space, to figure out what their robots could mine from them. You can even buy your own satellite launched and ready to do your bidding, evil or otherwise (laser weapons not included).
Prompted by such giant leaps for space-faring mankind, and along with the likes of World IP Review and IPKat, we’ve been pondering some idiosyncrasies in IP in the space sector.
The EPO’s Draft Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection – Part II
Last week Emily took a look at the EPO’s draft rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection. As noted in last week’s post the document appeared to be a work in progress (it was dated August 2013) and in the comments section to that post Antonio Pizzoli (Googling Wizard, First Class) pointed us at an updated version of the EPO’s draft rules which can be accessed here.
The August draft ran to 22 rules. The updated version only discusses draft rules 1 to 11. Furthermore, we note that the updated version introduces a new rule 4 meaning that there are some numbering changes.
We’ve had a quick look at the updated document and note that there has been some progress on some of the issues raised in Emily’s review. The following areas in particular interested us: (more…)
IPcopy 