Summary: Additional new comments which rebut false claims that the UK will enter the Unitary Patent -- a case of wishful thinking and distortion by those looking to financially gain in the UK from UPC

TEAM Battistelli (top-level EPO management) and Team UPC don't say much about the UPC anymore. It was very different a year ago.

Bristows' Brian Cordery and Rachel Mumby are busy writing about something else (nothing to say about UPC lately) the Bristows staff at IP Kat continues to be rebutted in the comments (as usual). The UPC jingoism doesn't carry water and people are noticing. "To sum it up," said a comment the day before yesterday, "post Brexit stay of the UK in the UPC is a fata morgona..." [sic]

Here is the full comment:

To sum it up: post Brexit stay of the UK in the UPC is a fata morgona [sic], only held alive by those having a (big financial) finger in the pie.

I like the barely blip!

All the corresponding waffling coming from this side should stop. It is getting tiring.

There is also an interesting point raised in JJ's plea before the committee:

"The judges and staff of the court will be exempt from national taxation on their salaries and from national insurance once the court applies its own equivalent tax and puts in place its own social security and health system, but neither exemption will apply to court staff who are British nationals or permanent UK residents."

One of the reasons for not directly taxing salaries of staff of international organisations is to avoid the situation of a different salary for staff of different nationalities and/or working in different places of employment. This applies whether the staff is a citizen of the country in which he works or not.

JJ is thus implying that UK nationals and permanent UK residents will see their UPC salary taxed by HMG. Has anybody realised what an incongruity that is? It is another proof, if one needed one, that HMG is not prepared at all.

And yesterday came this reply:

And this in my opinion leads on to the even more interesting question as to what form of employment law will apply to the staff of the UPC.

The UPC will have its own staff regulations but has it been clarified what court or tribunal then has competence in the case of disputes concerning the application of these regulations.

Please don't say that EU law applies here and that the EU Court has jurisdiction. The UPC like the EPO is not an EU institution. If it would be an EU institution then surely it wouldn't need to have its own Protocol on Privileges and Immunities because the EU PPI would apply.

So can anyone solve the riddle: To what court or tribunal will UPC staff be able to apply for judicial review in the case of employment disputes ?

Nothing. As we noted here several times before, the UPC is envisioned as a law-making or law-enforcing body which itself operates outside the law and is open to endless abuse, such as nepotism. The UPC just needs to be buried. For good. It was a terrible idea all along, for various different reasons other than language differences. ⬆