07.05.17
Expect No Progress Whatsoever on the Unified Patent Court (UPC) During the Summer and Likely Too Little Even in Fall
“When asked by Ars, the EPO’s spokesperson mentioned the imminent arrival of the unitary patent system as an important reason for revising the EPO’s internal rules…”
Summary: The Unified Patent Court (UPC), which is often referred to as Unitary Patent, is in a potentially fatal deadlock or limbo ahead of the summer vacation and no progress can be made probably until winter (if ever)
THE EPO is a mess. The UPC has a lot to do with this mess. By promoting the Unified Patent Court (UPC) at the expense of fundamental laws, constitutions, democracy and even the EPC, the EPO’s management has made a mockery of the very notion of justice (as in patent justice). Together with Team UPC they have attempted to stage a coup, but people fight back and resist this monster. We have reopened the petition against the UPC. And guess what? It’s working. The UPC is dying. Suffice to say, the EPO’s management and Team UPC will never admit it, but even some vested realists (and dare we say IAM) are losing their hopes.
“Together with Team UPC they have attempted to stage a coup, but people fight back and resist this monster.”The other day at IP Watch they said that a “Belgian appeals court judge laid out details on the Unified Patent Court of Europe.” There will be no such thing though. Why even push forth this mirage?
In reply to some nonsensical message about the UPC (we often disregard what Team UPC says or the UPC hopefuls simply want to believe), one person wrote, “your preferred approach would be to bring the UPP into force and then hope and pray that it can survive Brexit. To be frank, my view is that adopting such a “wing and a prayer” approach would be highly irresponsible. The interests of patent applicants and the public are best served by providing legal certainty. Pushing ahead at a point when it is impossible to determine whether known (fatal) problems can be resolved by a known (and very short) deadline will lead to nothing but legal uncertainty, to the detriment of all but the legal profession. And by the way, regardless of how much the UPCA will need to be amended in order to survive Brexit, certainty will only ever be provided if and when the CJEU “rubber-stamps” the novel mechanism by which the amended UPCA proposes to comply with EU law. Not much chance of that happening pre-Brexit, is there?”
“Luke Maunder and Liz Cohen from Bristows maintain the illusion of progress, ignoring all the barriers and focusing on small nations with barely any European Patents…”We said it a long time ago and we can say it again. The UPC is not coming to the UK. In fact, it might not be coming to Germany, either. That being the case, the UPC may never come to fruition. At all!
But don’t take our word for it. Just wait and watch. We have always been right in our predictions about the UPC, since the early days about a decade ago. Watch Team UPC suffocating or choking on its own Kool-Aid in its commercial blogs today [1, 2]; Luke Maunder and Liz Cohen from Bristows maintain the illusion of progress, ignoring all the barriers and focusing on small nations with barely any European Patents, citing the only two nations they ever mention in their blog these days! Hilarious!
Bristows, give it up. Shut down your “Bristows UPC” branch and do something productive rather than lie to the British public and to the German public. █
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