The traders who want to protect their invention or technology will have an opportunity to get
a unified patent in the nearest future. The establishment of the unified patent protection will cause coexistence of four patent categories: national patents, European Patents, European Patent with Unitary Effect and European Patent with Unitary Effect validated in one or few countries of EPC (European Patent Convention) not involved in the closer cooperation.
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 case of 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 the answer to this question at the 12th edition of the biggest CE innovative biobusiness affairs – BioForum (www.cebioforum.com), held in Budapest from 22nd to 23rd 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 present the most important topics regarding 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.
BioForum - Central European Forum of Biotechnology & Innovative BioEconomy and the accompanying events will take place on 22-23rd May 2013 in Budapest. The originator and the main organizer of this event is a polish company: BioTech Consulting (www.biotechconsulting.eu). BioForum 2013 is organized in cooperation with Hungarian Biotechnology Association (http://www.hungarianbiotech.org/).
