Friday, October 30, 2015 18th draft of UPC Rules of Procedure published

The UPC Preparatory Committee has reached a major milestone with this draft

The new 18th draft of the rules of procedure of the Unified Patent Court has been published on the unified patent court website. The rules of procedure lay down the details of the proceedings before the UPC.

The 18th draft shows extensive revision of the 382 rules. Many of the changes are to improve readability and clarity of the rules, but many rules have received additional clauses and other substantive changes. A tracked changes version, comparing the current draft with the previous draft is available here.

This version of the rules of procedure should be pretty much the definitive version; the unified patent court website foreseeing changes when the court fees have been decided upon. Draft proposals for the court fees are available in draft form.

 The rules will be not be fully definitive until they are adopted by the Administrative Committee of the UPC. As the UPC has not been established, neither has its Administrative Committee. Although the recent Protocol to the UPC Agreement will establish the Administrative Committee early, even before the UPC becomes fully operative (if the protocol itself is adopted that is), Article 41 of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court which governs the adoption of the rules of procedure is not among the parts which are to start early. This implies that one of the first things the UPC will have to do once established is to adopt these rules of procedure.


Photo "Celebrating" by Patrik Nygren obtained via Flickr  under a  CC-By-sa license