The E.U.'s Future Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court

One development in E.U. law that has arisen since my book went to press last fall is the conclusion of (1) two Regulations relating to a European Patent with Unitary Effect and (2) an Agreement on a Unified Patent Court.  These new systems are (for now) scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2014, though the Agreement on the Unified Patent Court still needs to be ratified and there are other reasons to believe that implementation of the system will be delayed.  Nevertheless, these developments promise to have a substantial impact on patent litigation within the E.U., and I will have more to say about them in the coming weeks.  For now, I highly recommend a website hosted by Véron & Associés that provides “access to the main publicly available documents relating to the future Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court,” and these overviews of the future system from the EPO and from Latham & Watkins.