Home » Posts tagged 'unitary patent' (Page 20)
Tag Archives: unitary patent
The unitary patent, an opt-out and a referral to the European Court of Human Rights
Could the proposed unitary patent system result in a referral to the European Court of Human Rights? Bear with me for a second while we fire up the flux capacitor and travel back in time.
It’s now 26 June 2007. Rihanna and Jay-Z are riding high in the charts with Umbrella and it’s a Tuesday. One of your clients comes to discuss the filing of their new patent application in Europe. After explaining the European patent process to your client and lamenting the fact that there’s no way of getting a single patent that covers Europe in some sort of unitary sense, your client instructs you to file a new EP patent application. Being the hyper-efficient patent attorney that you are you get the case on file later that day and settle back to a few months of discussion with the Examiner before the inevitable grant.
Time to jump back in the Delorean and fast forward 9 (!) years.
Unitary patent package – Agreement on a Unified Patent Court republished
The Agreement on a Unified Patent Court was republished yesterday. Those of you priming yourselves to review the agrement for changes can stand down – it’s merely a republication in the Official Journal of the European Union and the only changes are formatting changes!
The final texts of the unitary patent package are therefore:
- Unitary patent regulation – 1257/2012
- Translation regulation – 1260/2012
- Agreement on a Unified Patent Court – 2013/C 175/01
The 15th Draft of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court has recently been released but a copy is not currently available. The public consultation on the rules is expected shortly and we’ll update IPcopy as soon as we get a copy.
Mark Richardson 21 June 2013
The Unitary Patent and the Fee-saving Myth: Time to put that misleading £20,000 figure back in its box, please.
Over at IPCopy, we’re annoyed. Sighs are echoing around the open plan. Hands are being thrown up into the air in despair. Ipcopymark is particularly riled, and had to be placated with a helping of pork pie.
What could have ruffled our collective feathers, I hear you ask? Well, the UKIPO website has a new webpage with details of the UK Intellectual Property Bill. This in itself is not the source of our aggravation (indeed, there is some good juicy stuff to be found there, including a link to a marked-up copy of the proposed changes to legislation, and details of the proposed secondary regulation, which the IPCopy team has been surveying with interest1), but this informative new webpage includes something that really got on our wick.
Unitary patent – Presentation from LES Meeting
On the 13th June 2013, the Licensing Executives Society of Britain and Ireland held a meeting entitled “Europe’s New Unified Patent Court – for better or for worse?“. The meeting was chaired by the Rt. Hon. Professor Sir Robin Jacob and included a number of distinguished speakers associated with the world of IP: Richard Vary (Head of Litigation at Nokia), Arnaud Michel (Gide Loyrette Nouel), Alan Johnson (Bristows) and Ian Wood (Charles Russell). Oh, and me (so an 80% distinguished speaking panel then).
The meeting covered a number of aspects of the proposed Unitary Patent system (or “A European Tragedy” as Sir Robin Jacob put it). My presentation is attached below along with a brief overview of my slides.
Unitary patent package – Bits ‘n Bobs
Here’s a selection of news snippets and musings related to the Unitary Patent System from the last week.
- Members of IPcopy and Keltie LLP attended Browne Jacobson‘s annual IP seminar last week. One participant floated an interesting observation from the US (population: 314 million; states: 50) regarding the unitary patent system in Europe (EU population: 504 million; 27 member states). While we are worrying about bifurcation and central attack, it was noted that the US, which is much closer in size to the EU than to any particular member state, seems to be looking forward to a patent system that on the surface more closely resembles their own system (one large geographic area covering millions of people and “local divisions” in different states) than the current European set up. Are we setting up a system that will be more popular to people outside the EU than to those within?
Unitary patent – Everybody expects the Spanish Opposition! (Part 2)
Back in March we noted that, after their previous joint challenge with Italy against the unitary patent system, Spain had filed two further actions, C-146/13 and C-147/13, at the CJEU against the European Parliament and the European Council. No details were available at the time as to the content of these actions. However, over the weekend this all changed with the publication on InfoCuria of the two actions.
Details of the actions and our initial thoughts are below. In the interests of full disclosure I should probably point out that our initial thoughts are ones of confusion: “what Treaty is that?”, “what does that mean?”, “Have you heard of Meroni?” and “Who’ll be the new Doctor?”*
The Intellectual Property Bill – Patents
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
The Intellectual Property Bill is currently making its way through the Houses of Parliament. Announced as part of the Queen’s Speech earlier this month, the Intellectual Property Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords the following day.
The Bill proposes various amendments, particularly regarding designs and makes provisions for the UK to create its Unified Patent Court, in preparation for the ratification of the Unitary Patent Package.
In the first part of a series on the Intellectual Property Bill, IPCopy summarises the main proposals affecting patents. (more…)
Bits ‘n Bobs: UK Unitary Patent News
A Unified Patent Court (UPC) stakeholder group for legal professionals meeting was held in the UK this week and there was some interesting unitary patent/UPC news.
- The timetable for the unitary patent system to “go live” appears to be slipping. Remember that when the regulations and UPC agreement were being finalised it was the desire of the European Commission to see the first unitary patent grant in Spring 2014. However, we now understand that the UK is unlikely to be in a position to ratify the agreement until mid 2015. Following the 13th state to ratify the UPC Agreement, the system will come into being 4 months later. So, on the basis of the current UK timetable, the earliest the unitary patent system will come into effect is late 2015/early 2016. [That’s assuming that 12 other states have already ratified by this point] (more…)
The 15th Draft Rules of Procedure of the UPC: What’s new? [Updated]
Recently, a copy of the 15th draft rules of procedure of the Unified Patent Court, was released. We now understand from the Bristows UPC website that this version of the 15th draft rules has not been approved by the rules committee and may be subject to further change. We will keep you updated on the official 15th draft and will link to it on IPCopy as soon as we can get our mitts on it. Before it became apparent that the circulated version was unofficial, IPCopy put together a tracked-changes version of the Rules comparing the fourteenth and (unofficial) fifteenth drafts, so you could spot the revisions easily.
We’ve decided to keep this tracked-changes version available on IPCopy for now, and when the official 15th draft is released we’ll be taking another look. For the time being, and on the understanding that some of these changes might be undone in the official version, here’s a look at the changes that caught IPCopy’s collective eye…
UK Intellectual Property Policy Reform: Newsbites from the Westminster Legal Policy Forum
IPCopy welcomes K2 IP Attorney Adam Brocklehurst for his inaugural blog post, which we hope will be the first of many! Adam was our reporter-on-the-ground at the Westminster Legal Policy Forum on 30 April 2013, and you can enjoy his whistle-stop-tour of the event here.
The Westminster Legal Policy Forum gathered in Whitehall this week for a wide-ranging discussion of hot IP policy and political topics. IP Copy was there to pick up any interesting tidbits. Headliners were HHJ Birss, Baroness Wilcox, Sean Dennehey, representatives from the European Commision, and various speakers from practice and industry.
IPcopy 