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Unified Patent Court – Rules of Procedure – Consultation Open
In news that seems to have excited me far more than my colleagues who sit next to me, comes the announcement that the public consultation relating to the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court is now up and running. The consultation is open until 1 October 2013 and full details can be found here. The consultation rules draft is here. We also note that the website (www.unified-patent-court.org) contains a wealth of other information including some Questions and Answers about the Unified Patent Court.
We will provide more analysis when we can.
The Fees page is still blank though!
Mark Richardson 25 June 2013
The Unitary Patent Package: What obstacles remain? The latest facts and rumours.
Before the Unitary Patent Package can take effect there are various legal obstacles that need to be cleared. Some decisions are still to be made (the scale of fees being one that IPCcopy is particularly keen to hear about), and some legal hoops are still to be jumped (ratification, and amendment to the Brussels I Regulation being the most significant).
So, what remains to be dealt with before the first unitary patent can be granted, and when can we realistically expect the way to be cleared?
Here, IPCopy breaks down the procedures that remain, and takes a look at the word on the street regarding the likely processes and timescales for each.
Unitary Patent Package – Rules of Procedure for the Unified Patent Court (14th Draft)
As noted in our tweet last week the 14th draft of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court have appeared online (a copy can be found here). The document runs to almost 150 pages and 382 rules so it’s something of an early Christmas present for insomniacs.
The release of the 14th draft is expected to shortly be followed by the public consultation exercise on the rules of procedure. IPcopy understands that the window for public comments could be as short as one month and we will let you know as soon as we hear more. It is noted that page 2 of the 14th draft states that it is the aim of the Drafting Committee to complete the draft rules within three months of the signature of the Agreement (which is expected to happen on 19th February).
Unitary Patent Package – Timeline of events for 2013/2014
The much heralded unitary patent package* appears to be moving towards implementation after many years of proposal and counter-proposal.
Looking ahead, the various parts of the package are likely to come into force in 2014 (according to the official timescale anyway). Over the coming 12-24 months, there are a number of keys dates to note.
Unitary Patent Package – does Article 47(5) of the UPC Agreement hardcode bifurcation?
One of the most frequently-discussed concerns regarding the unified patent court agreement is the possibility of bifurcation*. This has, in turn, lead to concerns in some quarters that local divisions of the unified patent court could set themselves up to be patent proprietor friendly but send validity counterclaims back to the central division. In such scenarios, the argument goes, a patent owner could secure an injunction in the local division based on the issue of infringement that would have effect across the whole of the unitary patent area before validity has even been heard in the central division.
Regardless of the above “doomsday” scenario, however, it is noted that according to the UPC agreement the defendant will be able to raise validity as a counterclaim within an infringement action. It will then be up to the local division in question as to whether they hear both infringement and validity (I&V) or whether they kick the validity part of the action back to the central division (and thereby create a bifurcated case). [This IPcopywriter has assumed (probably naively) that local divisions will probably follow the practice of the country within which they are set up.]
However, on a review of the final text of the UPC agreement, we have come across a particular scenario, written explicitly into the agreement, in which the defendant is apparently not even able to raise validity as a counterclaim in an infringement action. We are referring to Article 47(5) UPC agreement and the scenario where an exclusive licensee brings an infringement action.
IPcopy 