The Chinese company Huawei has apparently become the first company to file a patent infringement suit based on a standard essential patent in the new European Unitary Patent Court (UPC), according to a report in the IAM magazine. So-called "Standard Essential Patents" (abbreviated to SEPs) are patents protecting a technology required...
File Wrapper Estoppel in the Unified Patent Court
File-wrapper estoppel (also call "prosecution history estoppel") is a term used to indicate that an applicant of a patent application that has made "narrowing amendments" to the claims of the patent application, for example to take into account prior art, may be precluded from broadening the scope of their granted claims to...
Unified Patent Court – Central Divisions
One of the open issues relating to the Unified Patent Court (UPC) was the question of the location of the Central Division that was originally scheduled to be located in London. The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union meant that a new location needed to be selected....
Start Date for the Unitary Patent Court
According to a number of informed sources, it is likely that the new Unified Patent Court Agreement will be ratified by Germany in the next month and the Court will start operating on 1 April 2023. This is not confirmed and we shall keep you up to date. The preparations...
Unified Patent Court – Administrative Committee established
The next step in setting up the new European Unified Patent Court has been established on 22 February with the inaugural meeting of the Court's Administrative Committee, according to an announcement on the court's website. The meeting adopted a number of items of secondary legislation, including the rules on the...
All Change for European Patent Litigation
What will change for you once the UPC is up and running?
Birth of Unitary (European) Patent System
The Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (PPA) has entered into force on 19 January 2022 following the deposit of the instrument of ratification by Austria. This event marks the start of the Provisional Application Period (PAP) and the birth of the Unified Patent...
Austria approves ratification of Unified Patent Court
The Austrian Bundesrat (the upper legislative chamber in the Austrian Parliament) did not object on 2 December to the decision of the Nationalrat (lower Chamber of the Austrian Parliament) regarding the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on Provisional Application (PPA). As reported earlier, the Nationalrat has already decided in favour of the ratification...
Austria takes next steps toward Unified Patent Court
Austria has taken the next steps towards the start of the Unified Patent Court by the approval by the Nationalrat (National Council - i.e., the lower house of parliament) on 19 November 2021 the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Unified Patent Court. This follows the recent ratification by Germany...
Unified Patent Court Agreement – withdrawal of the UK
As is known, the United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union on 31 January 2020. One of the unresolved questions was the effect that this withdrawal would have on the so-called Unified Patent Court which is being set up as a litigation forum for Unified European Patents, covering most countries...