Yet Another Amended Draft Agreement On EU Unified Patent Court

On October 07, 2011, the Polish EU Presidency has sent Document 15289/11 to the Delegations of the EU Member States for carrying on with negotiating an Agreement for a Unified Patent Court during a technical drafting session to be held from October 12-14, 2011 in Warsaw. The Document is titled Draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court and draft Statute – Revised Presidency text.  In the Draft, changes in relation to the previous version (Document 13751/11 + COR 1) are marked. Concerning this elder version see also my earlier post here.

Altogether, the amendments made in Document 15289/11 compared to the previous version of document 13751/11 appear to be more or less of a technical nature. In particular, some conclusions from the non-paper Document 14191/11 titled Compatibility of the draft agreement on the Unified Patent Court with the Union acquis appear to have been drawn. In particular, a new Article 15b now defines the relation of the Unified Patent Court with the jurisdiction of courts of States not party to this Agreement (i.e. Italy and Spain) as follows:

(1) The Court shall have jurisdiction any time the court or courts of a Contracting Member State would have jurisdiction on the basis of Regulation (EC) 44/20019 or, where applicable, on the basis of the Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (Lugano Convention).
(2) Where proceedings involving the same cause of action and between the same parties are brought in this Court and (a) court(s) of States not party to this Agreement, the Court shall of its own motion stay its proceedings until the jurisdiction of the court first seized is established.
(3) Where the jurisdiction of the court of a State not party to this Agreement is established, the Court shall decline jurisdiction in favour of that court.

Furthermore, a newly introduced paragraph 3 in Article 14c indicates that

The law of non-contracting States shall be applicable where relevant and as provided by provisions of Union law, in particular on the basis of Regulations 593/2008 (Rome I) and 864/2007 (Rome II), or by international instruments.

I expect to get further news next week after the technical drafting session to be held in Warsaw is closed.