2011-08-12

Would a new unitary patent court put the Eurpean patent office in order?

FFII.se got a request for comments on the new proposal for a European, unitary, patent court, in short:

"The Unified Patent Court is a court common to the Contracting Member States of exclusive competence on their territories for European patents with unitary effect and European patents. The Contracting Member States regard the Unified Patent Court to be part of the judicial system of the European Union and is subject to the same obligations as a national court with regards to the respect of Union law."

Sounds good. Some questions though:

Would the ECJ have competence over European Patent Convention and patent granting? 
Would EU-regulations allow complaints on patentable matters to go before the ECJ? 
What would happen with national patent courts? In most patent cases, invalidation is an issue for sure, so unitary patent trials would probably go to the new patent court almost instantly... 

The European Patent Office needs to have someone stop them from the terrible damage they are causing with software patents and bussiness method patents. 

Article 2
Definitions

(1) "Court" means the Unified Patent Court.

(2) "European Patent with unitary effect " means a European patent which benefits from unitary effect in the territories of the participating Member States by virtue of Regulation ### implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection.

(3) "European Patent" means a patent granted under the provisions of the European Patent Convention designating one or more Contracting Member States to this Agreement without unitary effect.
(4) "Supplementary protection certificate" means a supplementary protection certificate granted under Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 1 or under Regulation (EC) No 1610/962.

(5) "European Patent Convention" means the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, as amended.

(6) "European Patent Office" means the organ carrying out the granting of patents as established by Article 4, paragraph 2(a), of the European Patent Convention and the registering of unitary effect in accordance with Article 12 (1) (b) of the Regulation ### implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection.

(7) "Patent" means a European patent and a European patent with unitary effect.

(8) "Statute" means the Statute of the Court which is attached to this Agreement.

(9) "Rules of Procedure" means the Rules of Procedure of the Court.

(10) "Member State" means a Member State of the European Union.

(11) "Contracting Member State" means any Member State party to this Agreement.

Article 3
Scope of application

This Agreement shall apply to any:

(a) European patent with unitary effect;
(b) supplementary protection certificate issued for a patent;
1 Regulation (EC) No 469/2009 of 6 May 2009 concerning the supplementary protection certificate for medicinal products, OJ L 152, 16.6.2009, p.1.
2 Regulation (EC) No 1610/96 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 1996 concerning the creation of a supplementary certificate for plant protection products, OJ L 198, 8.8.1996, p.30.








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