03.04.19
Unitary Patent (UPC/A) Constitutional Complaint Can be Decided in a Matter of Years (If Ever)
Bristows should be disbarred for endlessly lying, manipulating the processes and even worse things
Summary: Blogs like IP Kat are still beholden to and controlled by Team UPC/Bristows; the same goes for Kluwer Patent Blog because of the blog’s ownership; when facts are assessed by firms other than Bristows, however, the story is entirely different
OUR regular readers can probably remember, as we mentioned it about a dozen times, that Bristows had intentionally spread false rumours at the later part of last year. Their staff did this repeatedly. It’s a classic but nefariously lobbying tactic, akin to AstroTurfing or what people nowadays call “fake news”.
Team UPC at IP Kat (Bristows) has just — a mere couple of hours ago — pushed agenda of patent trolls and FRAND and Brian Cordery (also Bristows) pushed SPC agenda at around the same time at Kluwer Patent Blog. It’s all related, albeit indirectly, to their UPC agenda and in the former case to software patents in Europe.
Hours ago we also saw Mark Bell of Dehns (Team UPC) pushing UPC promotion in a paid ‘article’. These ‘unitary’ patent fantasists have lost a grip/sight of reality, but at least this one is refuting Bristows by casting doubts on the decision’s year, as did JUVE when it said no oral appeals had taken place and it may take long (2020). Bristows pushed this nonsense about 2019 in lots of Web sites; it was almost always Bristows (in other people’s blogs or quoted in some news sites), but Bell says it’s not even certain that a decision will come this year (see headline). To quote:
Once again, the German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) has listed the “Constitutional Complaint” against German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) on the cases to be decided for the coming year. Followers of this saga will be aware that the case was on the 2018 list but was not heard.
While it appears likely that the UPCA case will now be heard this year (the judge assigned to the case appears to be close to completing the earlier cases on his list), it is still uncertain whether and when this will lead to the UPC being established.
[...]
It is the UK government’s position that it intends for the UK to stay part of the unitary patent system following Brexit. The official guidance omits to comment on what might happen should, as is looking likely, the UPC fail to be established before the UK leaves the EU.
What happens after Brexit is currently unknown, so it is difficult to say with any confidence whether the German constitutional challenge and the UK leaving the EU will prevent the UPC from being established, prevent the UK from participating in the UPC or everything will proceed as planned. The latter in particular would require a number of legal hurdles to be overcome.
The latest developments surrounding Brexit have only further reduced chances of UPC ever materialising, as we recently explained. It’s probably safe to say that the UPC is dead unless there’s some major mischief (again) in the making [1, 2]. Bristows is the boy who cried “wolf!” not thrice but literally hundreds of times (that we’ve noticed). Who would be foolish enough to take their word seriously and what’s the threshold for getting disbarred/sanctioned? They give lawyers a really bad name. They’re chronic liars. █
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