Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten
Cooperation Between the Unified Patent Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union
Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten
ISBN: 978-94-035-1719-3
Verlag: Kluwer Law International
After a decade of legal challenges, setbacks and delays, the Unified Patent Court (UPC) came into existence on 1 June 2023 as a court common to – at present – eighteen participating EU Member States. The UPC is uniquely responsible for its decisions on the application and interpre-tation of EU law in actions relating to patents and supplementary protection certificates within its exclusive competence, in particular with respect to European patents with unitary effect. The question pursued in this book is how the UPC may cooperate, ‘as any national court’, with the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in accordance with the EU constitutional framework.
In response to this complex question, the author provides in-depth analyses of the following is-sues:
- what role the UPC, like any national court of a Member State, plays in the EU legal order and its judicial system;
- whether the UPC may overcome the constitutional issues identified in Opinion 1/09 on an international patent court;
- how the need to accord with the EU constitutional framework limits an international court established by an international agreement with non-EU States;
- under which conditions the UPC has the power or obligation to refer questions to the CJEU, in accordance with Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) in particular; and
- whether effective remedies are available under EU law if a decision of the UPC infringes EU law.
Each of these issues is substantiated and clarified through detailed case studies and empirical re-search on the parties’ written submissions, hearing reports, opinions, decisions and related writ-ings of judges, lawyers, and scholars.
This book fills the need for a forward-looking, comprehensive study of the basic conditions for cooperation between the UPC and the CJEU, as well as of the mechanisms for ensuring compli-ance with those conditions and remedying infringement thereof. It seeks to help foster sincere cooperation in order to ensure effective legal protection of individuals’ rights conferred by EU law in the patent field. Judges, legal representatives, and parties in patent-related proceedings will find its contents particularly useful. In addition, as a study of the EU judicial cooperation system in the framework of EU, international and national law, its relevance beyond the UPC context will appeal to a broader audience of international law and EU law practitioners or schol-ars.
