The long-awaited day in which the European Unified Patent Court (aka UPC) will open its doors to applicants is now fast approaching. Indeed, by the 1st of April 2023 the UPC Agreement will entry into force and so the Court will receive cases as from that date.
What is the UPC?
As you may already know, UPC will be a court common to seventeen EU Member States plus four other non-EU states that will hear both infringement and revocation actions. The UPC will offer a uniform, specialised, and efficient framework for patent litigation at the European level.
The UPC will comprise a Court of First Instance with a decentralised structure and a Court of Appeal seated in Luxembourg. The UPC will be composed of judges from all participating Contracting Member States, chosen among legally qualified judges and technically qualified judges with great expertise in patent litigation. The work of such central division will be divided in this three main seats according to the subject matter of the patent in dispute based on IPC classifications. Cases will commence in any one of these divisions according to the subject matter pursuant to the UPC Agreement and the UPC Rules. In addition a Patent Mediation and Arbitration Centre is being established to complete the system with ADR procedures.
What is new?
Now, the main seats of the UPC central division will be Paris and Munich, while the third one is expected to be Milan, in Italy (previously this was London until UK’s recent withdrawal from the UPC system following the Brexit).
The seat which is going to be assigned to Milan will deal with all patents falling into International Patent Classification of WIPO sections (A) Human necessities (including pharmaceuticals but also foodstuffs, tobacco, clothes, furniture, footwear, some agriculture applications and sports and amusements and more) and (C) Chemistry (which includes genetic engineering) and Metallurgy.
Studio Legale Sutti, the TAGLaw member in town, intends to offer a comfortable, specialised and cost-effective access to this new court in Milan to all the network's members interested in opting for this venue for their patent litigation to be conducted in English, French or German language. In particular, our managing partner Simona Cazzaniga, who heads the IP department of Studio Legale Sutti, has been actively involved in the long preparatory path to the establishment of the UPC. She is currently advising and assisting businesses with operations in Europe, who wish to appraise the impact of the UPC litigation system on their patent filing and enforcement strategies. Simona Cazzaniga is also participating in educational activities addressed to lawyers, patent attorneys and other professionals involved in patent litigation aimed at acquainting them with the new court’s procedural rules.
For any clarification, just drop a line to simona.cazzaniga@sutti.com.
