The German government deposited its instrument of ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA) with the Council of the European Union on February 17. The step marks the successful completion of the necessary ratification procedures by the participating EU member states for the Unitary Patent Package to become effective for currently 17 states. The new system is now ready to enter into operation on 1 June 2023. More countries are expected to join in the future.

https://www.epo.org/news-events/news/2023/20230217.html

The start of the so-called Sunrise Period will be postponed by two months.(Read more…)

The Unitary Patent System will provide the possibilty to get unified patent protection in up to 25 EU Member States by submitting a single request to the European Patent Office (EPO).

The launch of this system is managed by the Unitary Patent Court (UPC) Preparatory team, which has recently published the current version of the Implementation Roadmap. This Roadmap includes all the key activities and milestones of the UPC in the upcoming months. The Roadmap can be found here.

The roadmap indicates the start date of the sunrise period as January first 2023. The UPC Agreement is planned to enter into force on April 1st 2023, accordingly the court is expected to start receiving the first cases as of that date.

The Member States which have signed but not yet ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) are Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Romania, and Slovakia. Validations after grant will still be necessary for Spain, Poland, and Croatia, as they are not part of the Agreement.

JUVE is considered one of the most important industry guideposts in the German legal sector, especially in patent law. As in previous years, the DREISS team is rated strongly in the JUVE Ranking 2021 both in the area of contentious proceedings (Litigation) and in the area of application proceedings (Patent Filing). This good result in both areas, despite the adversities of the Corona crisis, underlines the esteem in which our clients are held and shows that DREISS, in addition to the classic all-round support of its core clientele of medium-sized companies, is also gladly brought on board for visceral litigation proceedings of international groups in Germany and abroad. Of course, each of our clients benefits from the experience gained by the younger lawyers in our team.

For the entire profile of DREISS see here.

As reported by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Germany has ratified the Protocol on Provisional Application to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court.

The Federal Government has deposited the instrument of ratification for the Protocol on Provisional Application to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. This represents an important step on the way to the establishment of the Unified Patent Court.