Currently viewing the tag: "EPLAW"
Will we ever find cases related to substantive patent law in here?
Articles 6 to 9 of the Unitary Patent Regulation relate to substantive patent law. They regulate the right to prevent direct and indirect use of the invention (Art. 6 and 7, respectively), the limitation of the effects of the ‘Unitary Patent‘ (Art. 8) and exhaustion of the rights conferred by the ‘Unitary Patent‘ (Art. 9).
As the question of which EU member state will receive the Central Division of the EU Unified Patent Court (see here, here, and here) is officially seen as the only remaining obstacle to the Unified Patent Court Agreement, the Unitary Patent Regulation already received green light from the EU Parliament’s legal committee (JURI) in late December (see press release) so that the EU Council already began to linguistically finalise the Regulation text in early January.
THE DISPUTE ON ARTICLES 6 TO 9
Even so, a strong and illustrious ‘opposition movement’ of legal professionals and their associations (e.g. EPLAW and Jochen Pagenberg, European Patent Judges and Sir Robin Jacob, Professor Krasser, CIPA), industry representatives (e.g. ICC, IP Federation), and a few politicians (e.g. JURI member Cecilia Wikström (SE, ALDE) [1, 2, 3] and UK IP Minister Baroness Wilcox) demanded Articles 6 to 8/9 to be removed from the Regulation to prevent substantive patent law from becoming subject to review by the European Court of Justice via referral questions according to Article 267 TFEU.
But Hey, Don't Postpone Joy
After months of intense debate in the EU Council and the EU Parliament’s Legal Affair’s Committee (JURI), the European Parliament was scheduled to have its fist plenary session on the EU Patent Package (Unitary Patent Regulation, Language Regime Regulation, Unified Patent Court Agreement) on coming Wednesday, 14 February 2012.
While Google Search still delivers an entry “Plenary sitting – European Parliament Tuesday, 14 February 2012 Draft agenda. 09:00 – 10:20 Debates. European patent. Creation of unitary patent protection.“, the final draft agenda now announces a Fisheries debate instead.
As reported earlier, there is a strong desire of (parts of) industry [1, 2] and patent professionals [1, 2, 3], politically supported by JURI member Wikström and UK IP Minister Baroness Wilcox, to remove Articles 6 to 8 dealing with substantive patent law on patent infringement from the proposed Regulation. The fears of those groups are that otherwise substantive patent law would become part of EU legal order causing costs, delays, legal uncertainty. A related resolution of the European Patent Lawyers Association EPLAW expressed such concerns recently in a rather pointed way:
If one wants a really unattractive, inefficient, unpredictable and probably extremely expensive patent court system, then we will get it; one must only give the ECJ a chance to receive as many referrals in patent law as possible.
If one wants to see substantive patent law in Europe to be decided by judges without any solid knowledge and experience in this field, then one must involve the ECJ whenever possible.
And if somebody intended to lay a solid ground for failure of this – at some time very promising – project, then he will probably succeed.
Now there is evidencs (see e.g. this tweet) suggesting that Ms Wikstrom has lost the battle over Articles 6 to 8, so that the provisions dealing with substantive patent law on patent infringement will remain part of the Unitary Patent.
Vatican, Stanze die Raphaello, The Battle of Ostia ('Battaglia di Ostia')
Monday’s Competitive Council meeting under the Polish Presidency (Chair: Waldemar Pawlak, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Poland) was intended to finalise the EU Patent Package (i.e. a EU regulation covering the Unitary Patent and the its language regime and an international agreement on the Unified Patent Court). Right after the meeting it appead that, based on a compromise proposal by the Presidency, this aim was missed only by a faily small margin since, as was explained in a nightly press release
[...] The debate took place on the basis of a compromise package drawn up by the Presidency. The compromise was broadly accepted in substance, but the debate showed that further work is still needed. The Polish Presidency is committed to take the work forward with a view to reaching agreement on the creation of a unified patent court before end 2011. [...],
combined with a Presidency tweet according to which “only the seat of the Central Division of the Unitary Patent Court needs to be decided“, apparently meaning that all other issues have been fixed. And in fact, a supplementary press release of the Polish Presidency titled “Agreement on substantial issues of single EU patent” clearly confirmed that
Out of the whole patent package the only remaining issue to be decided is the seat of the central division of the Unitary Patent Court UPC (Court of the First Instance).
MISCELLANEOUS
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