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News
8 March 2011
ECJ says No to Community Patents Court
The European Court of Justice has decided this morning that the proposed Community Patent Court is incompatible with EU law. The full decision can be accessed here.
This will pose a significant setback to the Community Patent in its current proposed form. The two major hurdles requiring agreement were always the structure and powers of the CPC and the language regime. By ruling that the CPC is not permissible in its current proposed form, there appears to be a requirement either to alter the fundamental EU treaties, or to come up with an entirely new litigation structure.
The Court of Justice was asked to make a ruling on the Unified Patent Litigation System, which would put in place a Community Patent Court (CPC) to hear cases involving the validity and infringement of the porposed Community Patent. The ECJ has held that this new court, which would be outside the institutional and judicial framework of the European Union, would nevertheless be granted exclusive jurisdiction over questions which ought to be decided on by the national courts of Member States. Furthermore, the new court would deprive the ECJ of its own powers to make preliminary rulings on questions referred by national courts.
In a very forthright conclusion, the Court held that the proposed CPC would "alter the essential character of the powers" of EU institutions and of Member States, "which are indispensable to the preservation of the very nature of European Union law."
