Netherlands ratifies UPC, Italy to implement legislation
The Netherlands has officially ratified the Unified Patent Court (UPC) Agreement, raising the total number of signatories to 11.
The ratification was confirmed on Wednesday, September 14, according to the Netherlands’ Ministry of Economic Affairs and confirmed by the European Council.
For the UPC to be implemented, 13 countries—including the UK, France and Germany—need to ratify the agreement.
So far, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and France have ratified it.
If both Germany and the UK, the other two mandatory ratifying countries, were to also approve, there would be the requisite 13 ratifications and the new system would come into effect three months after the second of those deposits.
Also on September 14, Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, one of the two chambers of Italy’s parliament, approved draft legislation to enable the country to ratify the UPC Agreement.
Bill 3867, the draft legislation which was introduced to the chamber in May this year, must now be approved by the Senate and promulgated by the president to become law.
At least two of the parliamentary committees that favoured the bill highlighted the potential relocation of part of the central division from the UK (London) to Italy (Milan) as one reason to support it in light of the Brexit vote.
Despite this, according to law firm Bristows some deputies considered that the proposed UPC system would put small and medium-sized Italian enterprises at a disadvantage compared with French, German and UK ones, not only because of the UPC central division being located in Paris, Munich and London, but because of the official languages being French, German and English.
“The member of parliament presenting the bill stated that they would raise the issue of the London court being potentially relocated to Milan with the government, and noted that the language issue already existed with the European patent registration system,” said Bristows.
