클라이언트

With the ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) by Germany on February 17, 2023, a historic milestone in the European patent world has been reached.

In the past, the German utility model was often regarded as a less important form of protection compared to the patent and was referred to as the patent's "little brother".

The term artificial intelligence (AI) describes computer-implemented approaches to emulate human decision-making structures to enable computers and machines to process and solve problems largely independently.

Due to technical problems, this is now delayed until probably June 1, 2023, as the President of the Court of Appeal of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Chairman of the Administrative Committee of the UPC recently announced.

On October 6, 2022, the Administrative Committee for the Unified Patent Court (UPC) announced an updated timetable regarding the entry into force of the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court (UPC). It can be assumed that on April 1, 2023, the Agreement will enter into force.

On July 1, 2022, the new WIPO standard ST.26 for sequence protocols entered into force.

Further quality improvement of unitary patents

The new law is aimed to better align the bifurcated German infringement and nullity proceedings which are dealt with by two different courts, i.e. a state court and the Federal patent Court, respectively. The purpose of the amendment is to accelerate the nullity proceedings in order to close the so-called injunction gap that often resulted from the...