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CEIPI Conference

Towards a European Patent Court

17 April 2010

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Centralisation & specialisation of patent litigation at national level

• in the Netherlands, exclusive jurisdiction of the District Court of The Hague (since 1995)

• in Italy, creation of specialised industrial property sections in 12 first instance tribunals (since 2003)

• in Denmark, Maritime Court in Copenhagen (since 2006)

• in the Czech Republic, Municipal Court in Prague (since 2008) (infringement cases)

• in France, Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris (since 2009)

• Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, …

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Will the EEUPC reinforce this trend?

• For example, in France: Patent litigation heard at one place by a specialised court acting– as TGI Paris, when a case relates to a national French patent– as Local Division of the EEUPC in France, when a case relates to a

European patent or to an EU patent• Even if the Local Division EEUPC-CFI in France would not

be legally or institutionally linked with the TGI Paris• But in practice, the two courts would share all essential

components – facilities, most of the judges and other staff– « EEUPC-cap » , « TGI-cap »

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Regionalisation or conferral of competence on the Central Division

• Some Member States do not have a significant volume of patent litigation.

• Rather than setting up sparsely used Local Divisions, other options include– Regionalisation

• Where 2 or more Member States decide to set-up a Regional Division, they may designate several seats

• Each of these seats can likewise share all basic elements with a specialised national court dealing with actions relating to national patents

– Conferral of competence on the Central Division

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EEUPC

EuropeanPatentOffice

EuropeanPatent

CommunityPatent

Court ofAppeal

CentralDivision

Local/RegionalDivisions

First Instance

Revocationactions

Infringementactions

EuropeanCourt ofJustice

grant

grant

litigation

litigation

appeal

Appeal onMatters of Fact

and Points of Law

PreliminaryRulings on

Community Law