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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