Seminar - Best Patent Practices In Europe In The Advent of BREXIT - EU Patent Package, UPC, And Ways To Survive

Synopsis

National Patents in the various countries of the European Union (EU) can be obtained in two different ways.

One way consists of filing national patent applications in each of the countries of interest, the other one filings a European Patent Application at the European Patent Office (EPO) at Munich, designating as countries to be covered by the European Patent those member countries of the European Union (and beyond, like Switzerland, Turkey…) which should be covered by a patent. No "European Union Patent", which would cover the whole EU, is available at this point of time. In future, there may be a so-called Unitary Patent ("UP") available under the European Patent Convention ("EPC"), by designating at the EPO instead of only certain countries the whole EU (except a few member states of EU that are not participating in the UP project). That UP could be enforced centrally at a Unified Patent Court ("UPC"), not only country-by-country at Patent Litigation Courts in individual countries of the EU.

The EU Patent Package, regulating both UP and UPC, needs still completion of the ratification by Germany. It is unforeseeable when that ratification will take place, probably only after BREXIT. Recommendations will be given how to pave the way for the most suitable arrangement of patents in Europe and EU, resp., in future. A further point of discussion will be the present discussion in Germany relating to an "Injunction Gap" existing between an early injunctional relief obtainable from patent litigation courts without fully considering possible invalidity of a patent in dispute and the decision of invalidation authorities in Germany, creating a "blackmailing opportunity" for patentees when using German patent litigation, which can take place independently “of any other globally different patent litigation procedures or as a supplement thereto.

Speaker

Heinz Goddar, Prof., Dr., a German Patent Attorney and European Patent and Trademark Attorney, is a partner of Boehmert & Boehmert, with his office at Munich, Germany. Technical background (as well as PhD degree) in physics, with a focus on polymer physics. He teaches Patent and Licensing Law as an Honorary Professor at the University of Bremen, Germany, as a Lecturer at the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center (MIPLC), Munich, Germany, as a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, U.S.A., and the National ChengChi University, Taipei, and as a Consultant Professor at the University of Huazhong, Wuhan, China. He lectures IP Law at the Tsinghua University, School of Law, Beijing. Furthermore, Dr. Goddar is an Adjunct Professor and an Honorable Consultant in International Legal Services at the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Yunlin, Taiwan. He is also a Director at the Global Institute of Intellectual Property (GIIP), Delhi. He is a Past President of LES International and of LES Germany and has received the Gold Medal of LES International. He has been inducted into the IP Hall of Fame and is an ad-personam member of the EPO’s Standing Advisory Committee (SACEPO). Contact and further information: goddar [at] boehmert.de, http://www.boehmert.de.
 

Chair

Kung-Chung LIU holds an LL.B. and LL.M. from National Taiwan University and a Doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian Universitaet (University of Munich). He was a Research Fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan until 2017. In 2003, he was a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore and a Visiting Senior Research Fellow for the IP Academy of Singapore. Professor Liu has served as one of the founding Commissioners of the National Communications Commission in Taiwan between 2006 and 2007. In 2014-15, he was a Visiting Professor at the School of Law, Singapore Management University, and the Founding Director of the Applied Research Centre for Intellectual Assets and the Law in Asia (ARCIALA). In addition, he has been co-appointed Professor at the Renmin University, China (2017), and the Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation & Intellectual Property Management, National Chengchi University, Taiwan (since 2010).

This event is by invitation only.