Factsheet: The long road to unitary patent protection
The Council today adopted two regulations with a view to implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection (PE-CONS 72/11) and its translation arrangements (18855/2/11 REV 2). The lack of a unitary patent protection system has thus far constituted a market barrier for European entrepreneurs to a normal and effective functioning in both the EU internal market and on the world markets.
[een selectie van de citaten] It also identified three options in order to create an integrated jurisdictional system for patents:
- the accession of the EU to an intergovernmental agreement creating a European patent court (the draft European Patent Litigation Agreement, EPLA), which has been negotiated under the auspices of the EPO;
- the creation of a specific EU jurisdiction for patent litigation on European and, once created, on EU patents; and
- a mixed system that would combine features of both EPLA and the EU jurisdiction.
All these elements were under examination under successive EU Council Presidencies and culminated with the adoption, on 4 December 2009, of Council conclusions on an "Enhanced patent system for Europe" (17229/09) and a general approach on a draft regulation on the EU patent (16113/09 ADD 1). However, the translation arrangements for the EU patent remained out of the scope of these conclusions.
On 2 July 2010, the Commission submitted to the Council a proposal on the translation arrangements for the EU patent (11805/10).
In June 2009, the Council requested the Court of Justice of the EU to give an opinion on the compatibility of the draft agreement with EU law. The Court of Justice delivered its Opinion on 8 March 2011 and concluded that the envisaged system was not compatible with the provisions of European Union law [advies 1/09].
In the light of the Court's opinion, and after evaluating several options, the member states amended the original design by including guarantees to ensure compliance of the future litigation system with the EU treaties. They endorsed the setting up of a unified patent court by means of an agreement to be concluded between them outside the EU institutional framework and excluding the participation of third countries.
On 28 June, EU heads of state or government reached a consensus on the location of the seat of the Central Division of the unified patent court, thus completing the distribution of the seats as follows:
- the Central Division of the Court of First Instance will be in Paris (France). Given the highly specialised nature of patent litigation and the need to maintain high quality standards, thematic clusters will be created in two sections of the Central Division, one in London (chemistry, including pharmaceuticals, classification C, human necessities, classification A),
the other in Munich (mechanical engineering, classification F); - the Court of Appeal with the Registry will be in Luxembourg;
- the Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre will have two seats: in Lisbon (Portugal) and
Ljubljana (Slovenia); - the training facilities for judges will be in Budapest (Hungary).
