New Draft Rules for European Patent Litigation Certificate publised
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| Will graduation for the European Patent Litigation Certificate look like this? |
The Preparatory Committee has agreed on a new draft for the Rules on the European Patent Litigation Certificate and other appropriate qualifications. The new draft is available on the website of the unified patent court. Also an Explanatory memorandum is published.
The Unified patent court allows parties to be represented by European Patent Attorneys instead of lawyers. The attorney either needs to pass an exam and get the European Patent Litigation Certificate or he must have other qualifications. The European Patent Litigation Certificate ensures that the attorney has knowledge of the rules of procedure of the UPC, relevant law, and advocacy skills. The other qualifications include experience and grandfather rules for existing certificates.
We have discussed a previous draft of the rules before (e.g., here and here). Compared to the draft that we discussed previously, I found the following changes are noteworthy:
An institute that can issue the certificate no longer needs to be established in a contracting member state. It is sufficient to be established in a member state of the European union. This means that, e.g., a university in Spain could start a course to get the certificate. The course may be given in a language of a non-contracting state, e.g., Spanish.
The 'grace period' for existing institutes has been reduced from 3 years to 1 year (see below). Allowing institutes form non-contracting states may become important for this reason. Otherwise, a country that is a bit late with ratifying the agreement could jeopardize the accreditation of its institutes.
The new rules also extend the allowable institutes from universities and non-profit educational bodies of higher education to non-profit educational bodies of professional education.
Advocacy skills has been included in the required subjects of the course. The rules have clarified that the required duration of 120 hours are for lectures and practical training (and not for homework).
The list of existing qualifications that will be allowed has been extended. On the other hand, as noted above, the period in which these qualifications are sufficient has been shortened from 3 to 1 year. This means that these institutes should work on getting their accreditation done before the end of one year from the entry into force of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court.
The new list is as follows (rule 12(a)):
(i) Centre d’Études Internationales de la Propriété Intellectuelle, courses leading to the Diploma on Patent litigation in Europe or to the Diploma of international studies in industrial property (specialized in patents);
(ii) FernUniversität in Hagen, course "Law for Patent Attorneys” and its predecessor, the course “Kandidatenkurs Fischbachau”;
(iii) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, course “Zusatzstudium Gewerblicher Rechtsschutz“;
(iv) Nottingham Law School, course “Intellectual Property Litigation and Advocacy”;
(v) Queen Mary University of London, courses “Certificate in Intellectual Property Law” or “MSc Management of Intellectual Property”;
(vi) Intellectual Property Regulation Board, “Intellectual Property Litigation Certificate”;
(vii) Intellectual Property Regulation Board, “Higher Courts Litigation Certificate”;
(viii) Intellectual Property Regulation Board, “Higher Courts Advocacy Certificate”;
(ix) Stichting Beroepsopleiding Octrooigemachtigden, course “Beroepsopleiding Octrooigemachtigden”;
(x) Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, course “Advanced Course in Intellectual Property”;
(xi) University of Milano, course “Corso di Perfezionamento in Brevettistica”;
(xii) University of Warsaw, course “Podyplomowe Studium Prawa Wlasnosci Przemystowej”;
A notable one is number (ix). This course is currently required to become a Dutch Patent Attorney. As a consequence national Dutch Patent Attorney who graduated the course will be grandfathered into the system. (I understand that some of the other courses are also required to become a national attorney for the respective state. Can anyone fill me in, in the comments?)
Experience in judging patent cases has been included as sufficient qualification.
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