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EU tweaks draft patent rules to make it easier for #patent holders to sue
https://www.reuters.com/technology/eu-tweaks-draft-patent-rules-making-it-easier-patent-holders-sue-2023-04-24/
<< a proposal so bad the only possible drivers are corruption and wild ignorance. Why? Well:
#EU law issues are settled in the #ECJ - a good generalist court but awful at IPR. It is so bad that EU states have openly avoided linking patent #law to EU law for decades.
Hell, ECJ rulings on the closest thing to patents in their remit: #SPC/pharma-extensions are universally accepted as disastrous.
Ah yeah, but the day to day running will be fine, right. No, it absolutely won't be.
#FRAND and #SEP negogiations are hugely valuable and complex. They lead to massive, evidence-packed, and commercially sensitive patent lawsuits that are a nightmare. (Google "unwired planet frand")
The #EU body allocated in the new proposal to consider this all, is called the #EUIPO. It has done precisely no patent-related work to date.
On 1st June, a new European patent Court (the #UPC) opens. It will focus on #patents and SPCs.
Whilst all the signed-up UPC states are in the EU and bound by EU law, in the torturous UPC negogiations, one point was agreed early: that the UPC should be separate to EU law to avoid, to the extent possible, the ECJ ballsing up European patent law.
Now, right before the Court opens, the EU has decided to nobble legal certainty in European patent in a brand new way.
Every Brexiteer should be pointing to all this as an example of their fears: faceless bureaucracy ignoring outside views, ECJ rulings undermining national sovereignty, empire building by EU institutions, ... .
Christ, I am an avowed EU federalist, and even I think this is clearly overreaching the current framework and views. (Yes, it is a weird feeling being on this side for once, but for this proposal, I simply have no choice.)