Update: Austria is close to Ratification of the Protocol on Provisional Application of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court

In its report of 11 November, the Parliamentary Committee on Research, Innovation and Digitisation of the Republic of Austria has unanimously decided to recommend to ratification of the Provisional Application of UPC Agreement (PAP-Protocol) to the plenary (see attached report). The PAP-Protocol is now listed at position 12 on the agenda of the 19 November 2021 session of the Austrian Parliament,. so it is very likely that the Parliament will adopt the PAP end of this week.

The establishment of the Unitary Patent (“patent with unitary effect”) and associated Unified Patent Court will ensure that patentees can enforce and defend their patents before a single court – the Unified Patent Court. Austria was the first member state to agree to the multilateral Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) (deposit of the instrument of ratification on 6.8.2013).

In order for the Unified Patent Court to be operational from the very beginning, extensive preparations have to be made. This requires a provisional applicability of parts of the UPC in a preliminary phase before entry into force.

For this purpose, the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court has submitted the Protocol on Provisional Application (PAP). The present Protocol is now to become applicable to Austria by means of the present legal act.

The provisional implementation during a “run-up” period allows to make extensive preparations so that the Unified Patent Court can already start its work on the first day of entry into force. This would be a further step on the way to the Unified Patent Court, which is then expected to start its work at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023.

We already posted a detailed report on the decisions in Germany in our blog in July this year. We offer the entire analysis for download in English.

On the current status of the UPC, our partner Christof Augenstein interviewed the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee, Alexander Ramsay, during the AIPPI Online Congress on 12 October, 2021. In its latest issue 11,The Global IP Matrix had pre-published a summary by Dr Augenstein on the current status of the UPC to set the scene for Panel 31.