Patent changes - who will lose and who will gain?

A new patent protection system will be valid in the countries involved in the closer cooperation. The appearance of the unitary patent protection is strictly connected with the establishment of The Unified Patent Court. This court will be created on the basis of the agreement between EU countries, without the European Union participation. It is going to have an exclusive jurisdiction in cases concerning both the European Patent with unitary effect and the “classical” European Patent, e.g. in cases when the infringement of both patents occurs. Both initiatives are very complex in terms of complications that can result from the specificity of the EU law and the law systems in the unified countries, including the constitutional aspects. Furthermore, the existing international agreements need to be taken into account, especially EPC, TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) and possible future ones. It is nothing strange, though, that unified patent protection is a controversial topic.

A Polish governmental commission working on that patent agreement stated at the beginning of December that it can be harmful for the country and had serious doubts concerning the implementation of it in Poland. The doubts were mostly connected with the legality of the agreement in terms of Polish constitutional law.

Is the European unitary patent protection system equally harmful for SME of whole Central Europe? You can find answer for this question at 12^th edition of the biggest CE innovative biobusiness affairs – BioForum (www.cebioforum.com), held in Budapest from 22^nd to 23^rd of May 2013.

During a special panel session “Unitary patent from CEE SME perspective: who will gain, who will lose?”, the distinguished specialists of patent law will talk about the most important topics concerning the unified patent protection and The Unified Patent Court. Piotr Kamiński, PhD - Polish Patent Attorney and European Patent Attorney, an engineer and biotechnologist and Ulrich Storz, PhD - an expert of patent law will compare the unified patent in many cases with the “classical” European Patent as well as will try to make a complex SWOT analysis of the new patent protection system. This will help in answering an important question: will the intellectual property protection in Europe be easier or more difficult after the implementation of the unified patent protection? Moreover, the new possibilities created by the European Patent with unitary effect will be discussed. At the end, the threats of the new system will be presented and all the legal catches for the SME of Central Europe will be uncovered.

Translation from biotechnologia.pl by Jędrzej Bąk