BREAKING NEWS - Draft UK Legislation on Unitary Patent and Unified Patents Court
The Intellectual Property Act 2014 contained enabling legislation to allow the Government to make the necessary changes to national law in order to accommodate the Unitary Patent and Unified Patents Court by means of a Statutory Instrument (SI), which passes through Parliament in a simplified procedure.
The Government, through the UK Intellectual Property Office, launched a consultation prior to drafting this SI, as reported by the IPKat here. Now, the IPKat has just learned, the Government response to the consultation has been published, and you can read it here. This explains the approach adopted when amending the UK legislation.
Also, the draft Statutory Instrument has also just been published, and you can read it here. It takes the approach of amending certain sections of the Patents Act 1977, specifying which sections of the Patents Act will apply to Unitary Patents (and also which ones will not), and also incorporates in the Patents Acts by reference some Articles of the UPC Agreement. This has the effect of making the SI admirably brief, but to work out its effect it is necessary to sit down with all three documents, which this Kat has not done yet. One or more Kats may come back to this in due course. In the meantime, the draft SI itself contains at the end an Explanatory Note that gives some indication.
From an initial review, this Kat has noticed that the Government response to the consultation indicates that double patenting as between a Unitary Patent and a UK patent will be prohibited in the same way as currently between a European Patent and a UK patent (the UK IPO will launch proceedings to revoke the UK patent if they relate to the same invention). So patentees will not be able to hedge their bets between two patents, one enforceable in UK courts, and one enforceable at the Unified Patent Court.
The draft SI now needs to receive approval from both Houses of Parliament. Usually, this can be achieved quite quickly, and once the SI is approved, the UK will be in a position to ratify the UPC Agreement. The SI will not however come into force until the UPC agreement itself does.
The Government, through the UK Intellectual Property Office, launched a consultation prior to drafting this SI, as reported by the IPKat here. Now, the IPKat has just learned, the Government response to the consultation has been published, and you can read it here. This explains the approach adopted when amending the UK legislation.
Also, the draft Statutory Instrument has also just been published, and you can read it here. It takes the approach of amending certain sections of the Patents Act 1977, specifying which sections of the Patents Act will apply to Unitary Patents (and also which ones will not), and also incorporates in the Patents Acts by reference some Articles of the UPC Agreement. This has the effect of making the SI admirably brief, but to work out its effect it is necessary to sit down with all three documents, which this Kat has not done yet. One or more Kats may come back to this in due course. In the meantime, the draft SI itself contains at the end an Explanatory Note that gives some indication.
From an initial review, this Kat has noticed that the Government response to the consultation indicates that double patenting as between a Unitary Patent and a UK patent will be prohibited in the same way as currently between a European Patent and a UK patent (the UK IPO will launch proceedings to revoke the UK patent if they relate to the same invention). So patentees will not be able to hedge their bets between two patents, one enforceable in UK courts, and one enforceable at the Unified Patent Court.
The draft SI now needs to receive approval from both Houses of Parliament. Usually, this can be achieved quite quickly, and once the SI is approved, the UK will be in a position to ratify the UPC Agreement. The SI will not however come into force until the UPC agreement itself does.