‘In about two years’ time the new system will launch’, was the expectation when this blogger was asked in the Autumn of 2014 to start following and writing about the Unitary Patent Package. A year before, 360 candidates had already submitted an ‘expression of interest’ to become a UPC judge, of which 124 were qualified as “outstanding”. They were eagerly waiting for the moment they could start.
Over the last decade, many experts and observers have made mistakes in predicting the moment the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court would see the light of day. ‘January 2016: start of the so-called provisional period. October 2016: first cases taken. That may be a realistic timetable for the future Unified Patent Court’, Kevin Mooney, chairman of the Drafting Committee for the Rules of Procedure told this blog in 2015. Later on he hoped for 2019 and in 2021 he said it could be October 2022: ‘But I have to admit that over the last years I have given many presentations about the Unified Patent Court, and I have had to change the dates in my slides many times’, Mooney said. ‘It has been a very frustrating process.’ Read more