Central Patent Court
With an end to the language conflict in sight, there may well be a new opportunity now to revive the European Patent Office's idea of a central patent court.
So far, there was no uniform court system either for European patents under the European Patent Convention (EPC), nor for the Community patents to be expected in the future. The establishment of a central and uniform court system would help in particular to avoid the duplication of structures. Although we have moved one step closer to the Community patent with ratification of the London Agreement, it still remains unclear when the Community patent will become reality. Therefore the issue of a uniform court system has an impact only on EPC patents for the time being and will not also have to be applied for Community patents until at a later stage. The responsible EU Council Working Group has certainly been working hard to create such a court system since May 2007.
