In recent years there has been much progress in European initiatives to establish a Unitary European Patent and a Unified Patent Court. We last reported on this topic in March 2013. Since then, steps have been taken in bringing the legal instruments into force and putting into place the Court infrastructure.
Instruments of ratification of the required international agreement have been deposited by Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Sweden. Those countries. along with the UK and Germany. and at least 7 other European countries. will be covered by the Unitary Patent system from the outset.
More than 1300 judges of European states and members of the EPO Boards of Appeal have expressed an interest in serving as judges in the new Unified Court. The process of selecting those judges has begun and a new judicial training centre has been opened in Budapest.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Sweden have concluded an agreement to host a Nordic/Baltic regional division in Stockholm and agreed that the only language of the division will be English. It is expected than one or two further regional divisions will be agreed soon and will join the local divisions in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark and Finland, and the central division in London, Paris and Munich.
Cases to be heard in the Central Division will be allocated according to the subject matter of the patent. An analysis of IPC classification codes of patents undergoing opposition at the EPO shows that if those disputes had taken place before the Central Division of the Unified Court, Paris would hear 48%, Munich would hear 10% and London would hear 42% of the disputes, including all the pharma, medical device, and chemistry actions.
Proposals concerning representation of parties before the new courts have been drafted. It is clear that European Patent Attorneys will have rights of representation subject to them holding an additional national qualification (or in due course a new European qualification). We are pleased to learn that almost all of Abel & Imray's attorneys are likely to qualify as able to represent clients before the new courts when it opens. The procedure of the new court is expected to be somewhat similar to that of EPO hearings and our experience of those actions means that we are well placed to operate in the new court environment.
We will continue to keep you informed of further developments concerning the Unitary Patent and Unified Court and we hope to be able to inform clients of the costs of using (and of opting out of) the new system in the near future. The target date for the Court opening for business is in 2015, but our view is that it is likely to be towards the end of 2015 rather than the beginning.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
