01.31.20
Collapse of the UPC is “Business as Usual” According to Bristows LLP
What would be “unusual” for Team UPC then?
Summary: Team UPC is so debased or so detached from reality that all it has to say about Brexit is that everything is normal, everything is just fine (deep state of denial)
THE “BREXIT DAY” or whatever one chooses to call it isn’t something to be celebrated, except perhaps by foes of the UK and gullible people who believe that the EU — of all things — was our main issue (not austerity or inequality or mass privitisation or zero-hour contracts or misbehaving princes etc.) and the only upside we see here in Techrights is the immediate collapse of UPC — something which Berlin too alluded to some months ago. That does not mean that the constitutional complaint in Germany is suddenly totally moot as it can help determine whether Team UPC can come up with something else in the future (it can take years) which resembles UPC but does not include the UK. UPC itself is now dead. Anything else that might resemble the UPC Agreement (UPCA) in the future would be totally different and potentially unattractive to everyone, especially now that opposition grows even outside Germany (the Poles, the Czechs, Spaniards and Hungarians are some of the examples). The UPC is in deep mud, maybe quicksand. One might say that Brexit is a nail in the coffin, depending on one’s choice of metaphor.
The European Patent Office (EPO) doing photo ops with Team UPC won’t help. António Campinos just makes himself look rather foolish any time he does those…
“One might say that Brexit is a nail in the coffin, depending on one’s choice of metaphor.”We’ve meanwhile noticed that Bristows (at least Annsley Merelle Ward) won’t even mention ‘unitary’ patents anymore. The Bristows blog had nothing to say either because a ‘unified’ patent court seems like a dead dream. Ward, a proponent of software patents in Europe (she used IP Kat to advocate these) even admits upfront that Brexit is depressing to her. We assume that’s mostly for professional reasons. Some of her colleagues retired early (possibly in connection with this; it’s difficult to prove the connection). The UPC — or anything like it — is now dead. They spent more than half a decade promoting it endlessly and now that it’s dead they don’t have the ‘heart’ to say so. They’re in denial. This is what happens when one’s career involves lying to the public and to clients (who are being robbed as well as deceived).
Where’s IAM in all this? It wasn’t until a year ago that IAM finally admitted the UPC was likely not happening (after IAM had been paid by Battistelli‘s PR firm to promote the UPC). Just promoted (Lexology apparently bumped this up in Google News yesterday) was this self-promotional nonsense from IAM that deflects to Spain and says this:
Spain currently shows no signs of becoming part of the proposed unitary patent system, is this likely to change?
While Spain shows no serious intention of joining the system, I do not see the country remaining indefinitely and voluntarily isolated from its European partners in this aspect.
The average Spanish company may not have the same innovative momentum compared with some foreign ones, but as the most dynamic among them shift their core activity from production to innovation they may become more interested in the unitary patent and the UPC and put pressure on the government and the political parties to effect change.
The level of interest in the system will also depend on how it works, if and when all of the obstacles are overcome and the unitary patent and the UPC enter into force.
Notice that laughable optimism; they — namely opportunistic law firms — want us to think that the UPC is inevitable and the only question is, will Spain participate in it? We saw similar talking points in the UK after the vote on EU membership in the middle of 2016. What will be the next bogus narrative trotted or put forth by Team UPC? 13+ years of imminence? Will an alien invasion and takeover of the planet bring about the UPC? They want to believe… █
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