European Patent Litigation Agreement

"EPLA" redirects here. For the former name of the lawyers association, see European Patent Lawyers Association.
European patent law
European Patent
Organisation
European Union
Eurasian Patent
Organization
Centralization
and harmonization
Historical proposals

The draft European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), or formally the Draft Agreement on the establishment of a European patent litigation system, was a proposed patent law agreement aimed at creating an "optional protocol to the European Patent Convention (EPC) which would commit its signatory states to an integrated judicial system, including uniform rules of procedure and a common appeal court".[1] It differed from the Unified Patent Court Agreement in that the EPLA negotiations were coordinated from the side of the European Patent Office, rather than from the European Council and Commission[2] and therefore also offered the possibility for non-EU states to participate.

The EPLA was a proposed alternative to a set of proposed Community patent regulations.[3] The European Commission regarded the negotiations on the EPLA as unlawful,[4] although in 2006 it had gained a considerable ground among patent practitioners[3] and national patent judges.[5][6] The EPLA proposal was essentially dropped in 2007 after the Legal Service of European Parliament issued an opinion that the EPLA would prima facie constitute a breach of Article 292 of the EC Treaty and thus the European Community and its members states could not participate.[7] Many of its provisions were subsequently incorporated into the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court.

  1. ^ European Patent Office microsite, "Legislative Initiatives in European patent law", EPLA - European Patent Litigation Agreement, retrieved on July 11, 2006 (archived version)
  2. ^ (in German) Benkard, Europäisches Patentübereinkommen, 2. Auflage 2012; section "Vor Präambel", III.2, Rn 39-43: "2. Bemühungen der EPO-Mitgliedstaaten außerhalb des gemeinschaftsrechtlichen Rahmens; European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)"
  3. ^ a b Pagenberg, Jochen (2006). "Industry, Legal Profession and Patent Judges Press for Adoption of the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)". IIC. Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law: 46.
  4. ^ Oser, Andreas (2006). "The European Patent Litigation Agreement - Admissibility and Future of a Dispute Resolution for Europe". IIC. Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law: 520. However, the Commission regards the negotiations on the EPLA as unlawful, arguing that the Member States are prevented from pursuing this work for legal reasons because the Regulation 44/2001 has already created Community law in the field of regulation, with the consequence that to this extent legislative power lies exclusively with the Community.
  5. ^ "Europe's top judges start campaign for a single court to hear patent cases", Financial Times (4 Nov. 2005), cited in Pagenberg, 2006.
  6. ^ Dixon, Allen N. (12 July 2006). "Jurisdiction, Remarks of Allen N. Dixon, International Intellectual Property Counsel, London, European Commission Public Hearing on Future Patent Policy in Europe" (PDF). European Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 October 2012. Retrieved March 2, 2013. It is supported widely by national patent judges(...)
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference rejection was invoked but never defined (see the help page).