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Unified Patent Court

Revision as of 03:21, 10 March 2014 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (make intro a bit clearer)
For ESP's page on this, see: http://endsoftwarepatents.org/unitary-patent

The European Union patent with unitary effect (unitary patent) and the Unified Patent Court are two parts of an EU proposal which will make patents cheaper and litigation more profitable in Europe. The new court may also have a pro-patent bias and thus increase the risk of software patents becoming enforceable. Unitary patents will usually only be officially published in English, so speakers of other languages have increased risk of inadvertent infringement.

This proposal took over from the Community Patent since the Lisbon Treaty and is often called the EU patent or the unitary patent.[1][2]

As of August 2012, Spain and Italy continue to reject the proposals and the EU intends thus to make them binding in only the other 25 member states.

The stated aim is to unify Europe's patent systems for reasons of efficiency.

Current status: ratifications

To enter into force, the agreement on the Unified Patent Court has to be ratified by at least 13 member states including the United Kingdom, France and Germany.[3]

In August 2013, Austria became the first member state to ratify the agreement.[4][5]

Background: Community Patent (2000-2010)

The Community Patent was proposed by the European Commission in 2000 as "Rule of the Council" document number 2000/0177 (CNS), COM(2000)412 FR final.

On October 30th 2009, a new proposal was published: Axel Horns' overview.

Amendments to fix this

This proposal aims to make patent acquisition and litigation more efficient and more profitable for patent holders. With this goal, the software patent problems can't be fixed by minor improvements. To save software, we need amendments to exclude software from patentability or to shield software from patent litigation.

The amendments proposed by unitary-patent.eu apply both solutions: an exclusion in amendments 5 and 6, and a shield in amendment 8.

Relation to the ECJ

According to European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, May 18th 2006, the Community Patent would give the EU Court of Justice authority in interpreting the EPC:

an important feature of the proposed Community patent system is the accession of the Community to the EPC. By this, the convention becomes part of the Community acquis and subject to interpretation by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The ECJ is not bound by the case law developed by the EPO and is free in its interpretation of the provisions of the EPC[6]

Consequence: a court of pro-software-patent judges

By creating a court with patent lawyers as judges, this proposal will lead to a set of rulings in favour of expanding patent law (giving a "maximal" interpretation of the law). This is how software patents came into existence in the USA via the creation of the CAFC in 1982.

Even if the European Court of Justice would have jurisdiction to review the new court's rulings, we might see the principle of settled expectations causing the European Court of Justice to follow the new court.

May 2013

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

EU documents, newest first

Overviews

Article selection, newest first

References