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Unitary patent and Unified patent court – Conference Review (Part I)
Last week on 4 July I had the good fortune to attend the 2nd annual conference on the “Unitary patent and Unified patent court” held in Paris.
The strapline for the conference was “The Patent Revolution is ON” which was an effort to highlight the most significant change in European patent law in 40 years or so. In reality, as many of the panelists were keen to point out, the unitary patent system represents a modification of the existing systems and should be perhaps viewed as an evolution rather than revolution.
There was a significant amount of ground covered at the one day event and many of the panelists at the conference are people who are actually involved in bringing the new patent system into being. We had judges from around Europe as well as members of the both the EPO Select Committee and the Preparatory Committee.
Given the ground covered I’m going to go session by session to highlight the issues that were discussed. (more…)
Unitary patent system & EPO strikes – questions in the European Parliament
Marc Tarabella is a Member of the European Parliament (see his biography here). Back in October 2013, he asked a question of the Commission relating to the possibility that “patent trolls” could soon arrive en masse in Europe thanks to the incoming unitary patent system. As noted on IPKat this question resulted in a slightly sniffy response from Commissioner Barnier which started by saying “The Commission fails to see how the recent Union legislation on patents, namely Regulations 1257/2012 and 1260/2012, could increase the activity of so called ‘patent trolls’ in Europe.”
It would seem Mr Tarabella has not been put off by the previous response he received and he’s recently asked more questions about the unitary patent system. It should be noted that Mr Tarabella generally appears to be something of a Parliamentary Questions Factory with, currently, 1229 questions on various topics to his name!
All three of Mr Tarabella’s questions were asked on 17 April 2014. (more…)
Unitary patent: Nuggets of News
Some unitary patent related news bites today relating to the ratification process and some articles from Ingve Stjerna on the background to the unitary patent package.
Dr Ingve Björn Stjerna is a German attorney operating in the area of patent litigation. Ingve has been following the progress of the unitary patent system with a keen eye and may be familiar to readers as the author of the articles: “Law-making in camera, article on the doubtful understanding of transparency and democracy in the legislative process for the “unitary patent” package” and the optimistically titled “The “sub-sub-suboptimal compromise” of the EU Parliament, article on the Special Meeting of the Legal Affairs Committee on 19 November 2012”.
Ingve has recently dropped IPcopy a couple of notes to highlight a couple of new entries on his website. (more…)
Denmark ratifies the Unified Patent Court Agreement
Following recent posts about Sweden and Belgium depositing their instruments of ratification in Brussels (Bork! and Belgium), we understand* that Denmark has now also deposited its instrument of ratification. This information is available on the Council of the European Union website here. This news brings the total official number of countries in the unitary patent system to five (after Austria, France, Sweden and Belgium).
Denmark is expected to host a local division of the UPC in Copenhagen, with Danish and English being the languages of the proceedings.
IPcopy’s ratification infographic (see below) has been updated to reflect the news for Denmark (as we noted in earlier posts, for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the ratification post which also contains full details about the ratification process). (more…)
European Patent Litigation Certificate – CIPA’s Public Consultation Seminar
Article 48(2) of the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court (which relates to representation) states: “Parties may alternatively be represented by European Patent Attorneys who are entitled to act as professional representatives before the European Patent Office pursuant to Article 134 of the EPC and who have appropriate qualifications such as a European Patent Litigation Certificate“.
What constitutes a European Patent Litigation Certificate has been the subject of much discussion already (here’s an earlier IPcopy article) and is now the subject of a formal consultation (details here) with a closing date of 25 July.
CIPA has announced that it is to hold a seminar on this subject on 2 July 2014 at CIPA Hall. Full details are after the break or you can click here and jump straight to the CIPA Events page to book your place. (more…)
European Patent Litigation Certificate – Public Consultation
As noted yesterday the Legal Working Group of the Preparatory Committee has launched a consultation on their proposals for the European Patent Litigation Certificate. The consultation timeframe is relatively short and runs until Friday 25 July 2014. Comments are to submitted electronically to secretariat@unified-patent-court.org. The consultation document can be found here and an explanatory memorandum can be found here.
Our initial thoughts on the consultation document (with reference back to the earlier version of this proposal) are noted below. We would welcome your thoughts in the comments section. (more…)
Consultation Craziness
Not one, not two but three different patent related consultations have popped up in the last week or so, relating variously to the implementation of the Intellectual Property Act 2014, the implementation of the Unified Patent Court in the UK and the European Patent Litigation Certificate (required for European Patent Attorneys to have the right to represent clients in the Unified Patent Court).
The various consultations, their deadlines and a brief overview of each consultation are noted below. We’ll try and chime in with some more detailed thoughts in follow up posts. (more…)
And now Belgium ratify the UPC Agreement!
Following yesterday’s post about Sweden depositing its instrument of ratification in Brussels (Bork!), we were notified by reader Hans van de Heuvel that Belgium has now also deposited their instrument of ratification. This information is available on the Council of the European Union website here. This news brings the total official number of countries in the unitary patent system to four (after Austria, France and Sweden).
Next up on the list could be Denmark as this site appears to suggest they have now got Royal Assent for their UPC Act following their recent referendum.
IPcopy’s ratification infographic (see below) has been updated to reflect the news for Belgium (as we noted in yesterday’s post, for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the ratification post which also contains full details about the ratification process). (more…)
Bork! Sweden ratifies UPC Agreement
Bork! (Image via Max Geiger/Flickr under creative commons (click image for link))
Update
According to the European Commission website, Sweden deposited its instrument of ratification on 5 June 2014 to become the third country to complete its ratification formalities. Sweden are involved in setting up a Nordic-Baltic regional division of the Unified Patent Court and join France and Austria as the three countries who have completed the ratification process. Belgium and Malta have ratified the agreement but not yet deposited their instruments of ratification.
IPcopy’s ratification infographic (see below) has been updated to reflect the news from Sweden (for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the ratification post which also contains full details about the ratification process). (more…)
UPC: Preparatory Committee Progress Report
The website for the Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court has just been updated with a progress report. Some highlights from the report are as follows: (more…)
IPcopy 