CMS Unified Patent Court can't cope with influx of opt-outs
May 12, 2023
Less than three weeks before the planned opening of the Unified Patent Court, a message has been published on its website as a reaction to problems with the content management system, which apparently isn’t able to cope with the growing inflow of opt-outs.
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‘The CMS is an absolute disaster. The capacity of the system obviously is by far not large enough.
I was able to file one opt-out request today, after trying many times last Thursday and last Friday. At present, the CMS does not seem to work at all….
Does anyone know the bank account to which court fess have to be sent? I need to file a protective writ on June 1, 2023.’
Others complained the CMS was either terribly slow or not responsive at all and they hadn't been able to file a single opt-out in a week, even if trying at night.
Until now, there has been no official communication from the UPC on the issue, but the message published today makes clear that many users have problems to file opt-outs, and the UPC is struggling to solve this:
‘Dear Users,
As you are aware, we are getting close to the end of the sunrise period.
The resulting acceleration of the pace of opt-outs being filed during these last weeks means that the CMS is now under considerable pressure.
This pressure has caused a slowing down of its functionalities, sometimes even impeding the filing of opt-outs.
To ensure that users can proceed as planned, we, at the Court and together with our providers, are giving maximum attention to this capacity issue, working towards its improvement.
We understand that the delays that some may experience are triggering concern, which we are doing our best to address in the upcoming days. We will come back with further communication on this issue as soon as possible.’
The CMS has earlier been causing problems for the Unified Patent Court. The sunrise period was postponed from 1 January to 1 March because users weren’t able to get devices for safe access to the system. At the start of April a three day maintenance period was announced at the very last minute.
Please feel free to share your own experience with the CMS below this blogpost.
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Joris Verhelst
It's a trick to have as many patents falling under the UPC jurisdiction, which means possible money to finance the expensive salaries of the judges, as the 20.000EUR court fees are another sign that the UPC needs litigation to function. The more litigation, the better! (but maybe not for society)
Senex
The large volume of opt-outs was foreseeable long in advance, as was the fact that many of them would be filed at the end of the sunrise period. The UPC cannot - or should not - pretend to be taken by surprise in this respect. Incompetence or deliberate choice to make opt-out as difficult as possible?
PoorCMSuser
They will need to start accepting hard copies of opt out requests soon, since the CMS is not functioning, but there is no address to file those hard copies at on the UPC website! We have filed a few requests this week on the CMS. All late at night, and even then it was only just possible to file them. I think those with APIs are using them to continually barrage the CMS with opt out requests, and leaving them running overnight, which means there is just no break for the CMS to catch up and start working properly.
European Patent Attorney and Representative before the UPC
Indeed, opt-out requests are only possible at 6am if you are lucky. At 7 am the system is already too slow. On Wednesday and Thursday this week, we tried several times but it was not even possible to login. A poorly designed system which actually blocks the Patentee from their right to opt-out.
LightBlue
If all the proprietors of patents which are being opted out are so scared of the new court system, presumably they have no trust that their patents are valid. Perhaps they would be better off abandoning them, or at least amending centrally.