Prof. Dr Alexander Bulling was invited by the Baden-Württemberg Patent and Trade Mark Centre together with Eva Schewior (President of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office), Prof. Dr Sabine Boos (Heilbronn University) and Annegret Schmid (Patentcoach BW) to discuss the importance of IP rights on the 2024 Industrial Property Rights Day.
Our team is excited about a great rating and good placement in the IAM1000 ranking.
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.
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.