Spain’s actions against unitary patent regulations
The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJ) today delivered its judgments in the challenges by the Kingdom of Spain to the two EU Regulations that will create the European patent with unitary effect.
These will need to be distinguished from the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court which is a separate intergovernmental treaty between certain member states of the EU and is not therefore an EU legal instrument.
According to the press release from the CJ the court has today rejected the Spanish challenges, in accordance with the opinion of Advocate General Bot handed down in October 2014. This seems to remove a potentially significant barrier to the creation of the European patent with unitary effect (UP), and the Unified Patent Court (UPC). Hence we expect progress towards implementation to continue apace over the next year or so.
The full decisions are not available yet but we will be reviewing these and publishing an update in our next newsletter. To subscribe please send your details to subscriptions@dyoung.com.
Useful link
Court of Justice of the European Union press release No. 49/15 Luxembourg, 5 May 2015: judgments in case C-146/13 Spain v Parliament and Council and Case C-147/13 Spain v Council (PDF): http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2015-05/cp150049en.pdf