For the regulation on the unitary patent, the vote has confirmed what has been agreed in trilogue with the Council, i.e. the 4th column of the document leaked here. Amendments voted in JURI can be found here https://www.unitary-patent.eu/content/amendments-juri-committee.

The same apply for the regulation on the linguistic arrangements. But note that the European Parliament for that regulation is only a non-biding opinion, the Council decides not in co-decision, and not with qualified majority vote, but based on unanimity of the 25 participating Member States. I haven’t covered that regulation on https://www.unitary-patent.eu/.

For the unified patent jurisdiction, the role of the European Parliament is even less significant. The Lehne’s report voted on Tuesday amounts only to a resolution indicating to the Council what the EP wants to be included in the international agreement. In its current form, this agreement will be signed by some Member States. The EU is not a party to this agreement, therefore it is not even the Council who decides, but Member States. Note that it can be questioned whether EU not being a party is compliant with the Treaties, EU law as developped by ECJ case law and Opinion 1/09. This is notably questioned by Luxembourg in a published document on the Council register, but any answer from Council’s legal service is not public, see blog.ksnh.eu/en/2011/12/18/eu-council-something-to-hide-might-legal-opinion-tun-out-to-be-a-bombshell/. The result of JURI vote on this “resolution” can be found on https://www.unitary-patent.eu/sites/www.unitary-patent.eu/files/juri_vote_lehne.pdf.

There is notably an interesting amendment on the independance of judges for the newly unified patent court: Compromise amendment 6, by the rapporteur, which covers ITRE paragraph 4, to Paragraph 10 – point iiia (new). As far as I can see, the text of compromise amendments in the “Lehne report” are not published on EP website. Here’s the text of this amendment:

“(iii)a (new) is of the opinion that the Agreement should contain safeguards ensuring that judges are only eligible if their neutrality is not in question, especially if they have served as Members of boards of appeal of a national patent office or the EPO;”

As a “compromise amendment”, it can be guessed that such a provision as been accepted by Polish presidency and will be included in last or future drafts of the agreement…

So, what has been voted by JURI on Tuesday, was only what has been agreed with the Council in trilogue. No other amendment has been accepted (including Wikström/EPLAW/Jacob amendments to delete arts 6-9 from the regulation). Even amendements suggested and voted by ITRE committee for opinion have not been incuded. (for eg. ITRE Am. 11 recalling that the “rights conferred by the European patent with unitary effect shall accord with rights conferred by the Treaties and Union law”, which is something the regulation cannot escape) have been rejected.

The conclusion from this vote is that JURI has just blindly voted.”