Wednesday, April 03, 2013 Reading List for Unitary Patents

The first challenge when reading up on the unitary patent and unified patent court is to find all the primary documents. Personally, I like to be able get these documents from the source itself, it that is at all possible.

Previously the primary source for all official law and regulations relating to European patents is the European Patent Office itself. Post grant some may be found at the EPO, e.g. for oppositions, and some may be found in national law, e.g., for national validations.



At the moment the articles and rules that have been officially decided upon are at the level of the EU. They can be found in three documents.

There are two EU regulations: Council Regulation (EU) No 1260/2012 and

Regulation (EU) No 1257/2012.  Searching on Eur-Lex for will turn them up.

They are also published in the official journal of the EPO (OJEPO 2/2013).

There is one council agreement : Agreement on a Unified Patent Court 1635/12. Three corrections have been published to that agreement:  Correction 1 and Correction 2 and 3. Searching for 'unified patent court' on the site of the council of the EU will find it.

Finally, a draft version of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court can be found on the net. Unfortunately, I don't know what the origin of this document is. Can anybody fill me in?

Note, the regulations apply from 1 January 2014 or the date of entry into force of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, whichever is the later. The latter agreement has not been ratified yet.