Law professors petition against the Unitary Patent Package – but are the arguments correct? Wouter Pors, Bird & Bird The Hague

A petition called “The Union cannot be stripped of its powers by the Member States: the dangerous precedent of the patent package”, signed by more than 40 law professors, retired law professors and lawyers was published on the IPKat blog on Friday 13 March 2015 (the petition may be read here).  The timing of this petition is remarkable. One would have expected such a petition to be published around the time when the Council Decision authorising enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection of 10 March 2011 (2011/167/EU) was published, or maybe early 2013, when both the Unitary Patent Regulation, the Regulation on Translation Arrangements and the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) had become available to the public. Instead, it is published in between the Advocate-General’s opinion on the Spanish appeals against the two Regulations and the expected judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union on those appeals.

Read the entire contribution here.