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EU Commission publishes Proposal of amendend Brussels I Regulation for ensuring Enforcement of UPC Judgements

By On July 31, 2013 · 1 Comment · In EU law, EU Unified Patent Court, Unitary Patent

In this earlier posting we discussed the compatibility of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA)  with the Acquis Communautaire of the European Union. One of those aspects was an adaption of the Brussels I Regulation (Ref 1215/2012), which ensures recognition and enforcement of national court judgements in other EU member states (see also here and here). Article 89(1) UPCA requires that an adapted Brussels I Regulation entered into force before the UPCA can itself enter into force.

Thus, the task is to implement the Unified Patent Court as a court common to a subset of EU member states and subject to the same obligations under EU law as any other national court. A similar situation applies to the Benelux Court of Justice. As this court up to now only provided preliminary rulings on interpretation of the national law of Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg, it is now receiving new jurisdictional competences from the national courts of those three countries, thus giving cause to an adaptation of the Brussels I Regulation as well.   

As the Brussels I Regulation up to now only relates to EU-wide recognition of civil and commercial judgements of  national courts, it is apparent that a mechanism is required to ensure recognition of UPC judgements among the EU member states.   

Now the EU Commission has issued a proposal for an amendment (COM(2013) 554 final) to clarify how the jurisdictional rules of Brussels I will work in the context of the UPCA and should be applied in relations between EU and UPC Member States (see press release).

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