The European Patent with unitary effect (“Unitary Patent”) will be introduced soon. The final stage of the preparatory work will be accomplished by the end of this summer and the final missing ratification will then be deposited by Germany.
Damien Colombié, Industrial Property Attorney, and Camille Pecnard, Attorney at Law at LAVOIX, come back on the impact of the European Patent with Unitary Effect and the Unified Patent Jurisdiction, in page 5 and 6 of the weekly La Semaine Juridique.
To read the full article of La Semaine Juridique, click here.
The patents’ nationality in case of joint ownership is determined by Article 7 of Regulation 1257/2012 which states:
The present system of European (EP) patents granted by the European Patent Office, has the drawback that the same patent, validated in several states, may lead to several parallel disputes in these jurisdictions.
The Unified Patent package creates a unitary effect for European patents encompassing the states that have ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA – to be found here). That is to say, an EP patent with unitary effect will have the same effects in all the states that ratified the UPCA and where said patent has been validated.