European Union

Will the Unitary Patent project become operational on 1 December 2017? The UPC Preparatory Committee has warned this date ‘is conditional and provided with the clear disclaimer that there are a…

The Spanish Parliament, the Congreso de los Diputados, surprisingly adopted a non-binding motion on 7 March 2017, requesting the government to join the Unitary Patent system. Spain has been the only…

The Spanish parliament will vote today on a non-binding motion of the socialist opposition party PSOE, which calls on the government to reconsider joining the Unitary Patent system. The motion was…

How to prepare for the upcoming Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court, which are expected to start functioning on 1 December of this year? In a guest post, Wouter Pors, partner of Bird & Bird…

Italy has ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement. It is the 12th member state of the Unitary Patent project to do so. The instrument of ratification, the formal final step in the procedure, was…

No more than 15 to 60 seconds. That’s the time it will take to opt out a patent from the jurisdiction of the Unified Patent Court, once the so-called sunrise period of the Court has started on 1…

The UK will ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) in March, most likely before the Brexit article 50 is triggered. German will be ready to ratify soon as well, but will delay the official…

Even if a way is found to keep the United Kingdom in the Unitary Patent system after the Brexit, it is hard to believe London can keep its seat of the central division of the Unified Patent Court…

Since the UK announced it wants to ratify the Unified Patent Court Agreement despite the Brexit vote (last week the new IP minister of the UK, Jo Johnson, repeated the announcement of his predecessor…