Currently viewing the tag: "Seat of Unified Patent Court"
Seat of ... Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin (Bundeskanzleramt)
In one of our latest postings on the legal and political shadows of the Unified Patent Court Agreement we concluded that the stuck ‘seat issue’ will now have to be decided on the top executive level, i.e. in personal talks between Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister David Cameron, and - should he survive the French presidential election in April/May 2012 - Nicolas Sarkozy as the only serious and realistic bits were Berlin, London, and Paris, respectively.
While the German government always claimed the seat of a European Patent Court, should such court ever exist, London became a candidate rather late and only after intervention of the UK legal profession and Paris was considered a compromise location to prevent a deadlock between Munich and London. None of these bits is ideal for everyone as each has considerable drawbacks, as has been recently summarised on FT.com “few other EU countries are happy with a Munich seat because the city is already the home to EPO“, “Britain lacks goodwill or allies“, and “French inflexibility has been damaging“.
Absent of any reliable source the tea leaves give some cryptic clues: Munich on schedule, London delayed, Paris vanished?
The story so far. As we all know, the talks on the new EU-wide patent infrastructure (consisting basically of the Unitary Patent Regulation and the Unified Patent Court Agreement) run aground in late December despite quite some rounds of negotiations producing encouraging press releases according to which the so called ‘EU Patent Package’ was considered “broadly accepted in substance”. However, at the end of the Polish EU Presidency‘s half-year term, the adoption of the “Warsaw Patent Convention” – a term coined by Polish Deputy Prime Minister Pawlak – could not be celebrated as expected due to ongoing dissension.
Even though it was spread after the failed Competitiveness Council of December 5/6 through semi-official channels (e.g. tweets and press report) that the whole deal was almost done and only the seat of the central division of the Unified Patent Court remained to be decided, real doubts and harsh criticism almost immediately occurred and stakeholders saw an opportunity to again open the discussion on various substantive legal issues (see e.g. EPLAW resolution, FICPI position paper), such as on Articles 6 to 9 of the Regulation (effects of patents) that require substantive patent law to be subject to review by the CJEU.
Despite ongoing controversies and criticism (“desaster“, “bound to fail“) as to substantive issues, the politicians declared the dice cast for the Unitary Patent so that the Regulation was not unwrapped again for negotiations as to the legal merits. In fact, the Regulation for the Unitary Patent meanwhile got a green light from the powerful legal committee (JURI) of the EU Parliament in late December and the EU Council began to linguistically finalise the Regulation text in early January.
When Poland took over the EU Council Presidency in summer, the incoming Polish Presidency emphasised in a Note its determination to wisely utilise the “momentum for finalising the legislative processes” and “to continue the work in parallel on both [creation of unitary patent protection and creation of a unified patent litigation system], with a view to reaching an overall political agreement within the Council at the end of this year”.
In November, the Polish Presidency announced in Document 17539/11 its intention to organise an initialling ceremony whereby the text of the Unitary Patent Court Agreement could be finalised in Warsaw on 22 December 2011 (see also here). As the Competitiveness Council meeting on 5 December 2011 ended with the positive news that only the seat of the Central Division of the Unitary Patent Court remains to be decided, hopes increased that the new European Unitary Patent may become reality by the end of this months, when Poland will pass the Presidency baton over to Denmark.
Today, the EU Council published a packed agenda (MEMO/11/864) for the meeting of the Competitiveness Council under the current Polish Presidency on Monday and Tuesday next week in Brussels (see webcast). Further, this background note tells us that the Council will “examin[e the] files related to the creation of unitary patent protection and of a unified patent litigation system” in the afternoon of Monday 5th.
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