European Scrutiny Committee publishes report into proposed Unified Patent Court
3 May 2012
The draft agreement on the Unified Patent Court (UPC) likely to hinder, rather than help enforcement of patents within the EU, says Committee
Background
The Committee has held the draft agreement on the UPC under scrutiny since September last year. There has been vehement opposition to the draft agreement from national and European patent professions.
Small and medium sized businesses (SMEs)
The Committee is particularly concerned about the effect the agreement would have on small and medium sized businesses (SMEs) who are supposedly the main intended beneficiaries. The patent profession was overwhelmingly of the opinion that the current draft of the UPC Agreement would actually increase litigation costs for SMEs and be far more burdensome than the existing system in the UK.
The overall aim of the UPC was to allow SMEs in particular to be able to obtain a single patent covering 25 countries at an affordable cost. However, the Committee heard that very few SMEs actually require protection in all 25 States and so cost savings would not be as great as was expected, and that litigation before the UPC was likely to be convoluted, expensive and protracted.
Recommendations
The Committee says that it is vital that the UK Government adopts a strong position reflecting the concerns of practitioners in the final negotiations of the agreement, as well as calling for the Central Division of the UPC to be in London in order to mitigate the most damaging effects of a unitary EU-wide patent.
Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, Bill Cash, says
"Although the theory of a single EU-wide patent - with a single court to administer it - has long been thought desirable, the practice has long been elusive. These latest proposals appear, regrettably, to be a further example of this. They would increase costs for SMEs and hinder the enforcement of patents within the EU, particularly by giving additional jurisdiction to the Court of Justice of the EU and not allowing the invalidity of a patent to be a defence to infringement proceedings. The negotiations have been rushed and effectively excluded the views of European patent professions.
We found the responses of the Minister, Baroness Wilcox, oddly detached from the evidence we heard on these important points. This appears now to be a damage-limitation exercise but the UK Government must bring the practical concerns we heard to the table as negotiations conclude, and in particular ensure that the Central Division of the UPC sits in London."