Decision on European Unitary Patent Law Postponed

The European Parliament (EP) has postponed the recent vote on the new “Unitary Patent Law” which was drafted jointly with the European council. Last Friday the European Council comprising of 27 states of European Union (EU) reached an agreement to create a single patent system for 25 states of the Union under a single patent court.

The proposed European Unitary Patent also known as the EU Patent, if passed, enables any individual or company to file single patent application with the European Patent Office for getting a unitary patent throughout European Union. The proposed patent system is intended to remove the difficulties of the existing European Patent Convention where patents are granted as a “bundle of nationally enforceable rights”. Unitary Patents is considered to reduce costs of patent application and to boost innovation by providing an affordable patent in Europe with a single specialized jurisdiction.

The proposed regulation provides for establishing a specialized court for dealing with Patent issues. Thus an infringement case can be filed in any of the three courts established in Paris, London and Munich subject to their specializations. Article 6 to 8 of the Regulation passed in last December, on the basis of an agreement between the Council and EP, allows an appeal from specialized patent courts to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in direct and indirect patent infringement cases.

But the new agreement reached by the Council on Friday deleted these clauses, thereby giving exclusive jurisdiction to the newly established Patent court and its clusters over patent infringement cases. Even the European Court of Justice will not have jurisdiction over matters concerning patent infringements. This limitation towards jurisdiction of the ECJ has led to differences among the members of European Parliament.

Many members of the EP consider it a “Big mistake” to exclude ECJ from the unitary patent system though on the contrary, the representative of UK consider this as reasonable. According to them “the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice leads to anomalous consequences”. These debates on the new issue on jurisdiction of ECJ have forced the EP to postpone its votes on the regulation for further deliberation.