European Patent Judiciary

The dissertation examines current European patent court system and the possibilities of its improvement. First of all it identifies main problems of the existing fragmented patent litigation and in response to those findings, examines possible solutions to the situation. First, it deals with the possibility of adopting certain measures to improve the current situation, while maintaining the current system, in which national courts remain competent in patent disputes. The second option is linked to the issue of creating new specialized European patent jurisdiction. Thus the dissertation chronologically analyses individual legislative proposals and documents on the creation of a specialized European patent court system at supranational (EU) and international level. Namely Community Patent Convention (1975), Protocol on Litigation to the Agreement relating to Community Patents (1989), draft EPLA (European Patent Litigation Agreement 2003), proposals on decisions establishing Community Patent Court (2003) and draft Agreement on the European and Community Patents Court (2009). Separate section is devoted to the most recent Agreement on Unified Patent Court opened only to EU Member States, which was signed early in 2013 by most of them. The main objective of the research is to answer the question whether..