At its cabinet meeting on Friday, the Luxembourg government approved the bill concerning the agreement to base the new Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court in Luxembourg - the original agreement had been signed on 1 October last year.
This now allows for the recruitment of judges for all aspects of the Court of Appeal, including the Registrar and Deputy Registrar, which in turn will ensure an effective start of the work once the necessary ratification formalities have been completed.
The Unified Patent Court will comprise a Court of First Instance, a Court of Appeal and a Registry. The Court of First Instance will be composed of a central division (with seat in Paris and two sections in London and Munich) and by several local and regional divisions in the Contracting Member States to the Agreement. The Court of Appeal will be located in Luxembourg.
Currently, national courts and authorities of the contracting states of the European Patent Convention are competent to decide on the infringement and validity of European patents. In practice, this gives rise to a number of difficulties when a patent proprietor wishes to enforce a European patent - or when a third party seeks the revocation of a European patent - in several countries: high costs, risk of diverging decisions and lack of legal certainty.
