The UPC’s Advisory Committee has requested input from a number of stakeholder organisations including EPLAW on what it described as –“the fact that there is an uneven distribution of UPC cases” between the various first instance UPC divisions.
In recent articles and “open letters” that have been circulated publicly, there seems to have been confusion regarding EPLAW’s position and its internal communications with EPLAW members in relation to this request for information. EPLAW is an organization made up of experienced patent litigators from across Europe and the UK. Its objective is the promotion of equitable and efficacious handling of patent disputes in Europe, working towards a truly harmonized European patent litigation system. To be clear, it has not taken any position on what can or should be done (if anything) to try to spread workload and use of the UPC’s judicial resources. In response to the request from the UPC’s Advisory Committee it has simply called for input from all of its members to collect their views, observations and suggestions, on the reasons for the current distribution of cases and whether members haves any ideas for encouraging a more even distribution, mentioning a few examples to inspire its members to think about the issue and encouraging them to provide practical suggestions.
Over the past few days, we have received a wide number of different responses from our members from different countries, all of which are very much appreciated and valuable for our investigation into this issue. We will collate responses, categorize and summarize them for our reply to the Advisory Committee. The Advisory Committee will then be able to use this information– together with the input it will get from the other Observer Organizations EPLIT, epi and BusinessEurope – when considering its advice to the UPC’s Administrative Committee and the 18 contracting member states represented therein.
