A Study On The EU Patent Litigation

Along with the acceleration of the integration of global economy, science and technology, intellectual property gradually become the foundation supporting the development of economy, science and technology, among which the patent system is one of the most successful and most important content. In the era of knowledge economy, patent rules have become the main tools to regulate economic, culture and trade activities. Accompanied with transnational trade and communication of technology, large transnational patent disputes happen. However, because of the attribute of patent right such as territoriality, the traditional principle of jurisdiction in the patent proceedings is mainly strict regional jurisdiction, which causese the insurmountable obstacle between the transnational development of economy and technology and the strict regional restriction in patent jurisdiction. Therefore, breaking through the restriction to patent jurisdiction, constructing new jurisdiction rules corresponding with era character and realizing the unification of patent judicial protection is of great significance.In the process of development and construction of patent system, EU always keeps ahead in the world because of its high integration. The dissertation bases on the EU patent litigation system as the research object, starts with the process of the integration of EU patent and focuses on the questions including the relief patterns, jurisdiction and unified judicial protection of EU patent from two aspects of theory and practice, combining with the research achievements of academic groups and international convention. In addition, European Patent Organization and EU positively design European patent court and Community patent court in order to unify the Eropean patent litigation system so as to strengthen the legal certainty and the consistency of judges. The dissertation wills also discusse the relevant problems of the "super-national" professional court system. Finally, the dissertation wills make a prognosis about the future development trend of EU patent litigation system.The dissertation consist of five chapters except preamble, about 250,000 words.The first chapter mainly introduces the fundamental circumstances of patent litigation system in EU. Firstly, the dissertation introduces the concept and character of patent, especially analyzes the causes of territoriality of patent. Secondly, the dissertation illustrates the background of research——the integration of EU patent law. This part mainly introduces the historical development and the coordination and unification of European patent system, analyzes the motivation of integration of European patent, sum up the problems in the process of integration of the patent, and points out that the issues of language, fee and jurisdiction are the key points and difficulties in unification and coordination of EU patent systems. Thirdly, the dissertation introduces the characters and classification of EU patent disputes so as to illustrate the complexity of the dispute resolution mechanism in EU, and restricts the research field of this paper to the litigation system of EU patent other than the arbitration and intermediation.The second chapter mainly discusses the relief mechanism of patent disputes in EU and its member states. Transnational patent disputes can happen in any link such as patent application, appeal, effectiveness, infringement and so on, and the regulation of different countries are various about how to clarify the different types of the patent disputes, what remedy mechanism to take accordingly and which court to exercise jurisdiction. This part mainly compares the mechanism of patent dispute settlement of EU and its the member states with mechanism of the United States, Japan, China and other countries and regions based on the classification of patent disputes, finds the optimal approach to solve the patent disputes on the basis of theoretical analysis, points out that strengthing the judicial function, reducing administrative intervention, gradually transferring to professional patent court (or intellectual property rights court) model with technical judge (or technical assistant) is more rational choice.The third chapter principally expounds on the jurisdiction of EU patent litigation. With the strengthening of international protection of patent and the increasing of the numbers of transnational patent disputes, it is inevitabe that the problem whether one country can exercise jurisdiction on a foreign patent rights occurs. The principle of regional jurisdiction of patent has been challenged today by western countries, so it is important for us to echo the practice, establish new jurisdiction rules of transnational patent disputes and to realize innovation on patent jurisdiction.This part firstly analyzes the traditional theories that restricts one court to exercise the jurisdiction on foreign patent, and points that the territory of patent and the principle of regional jurisdiction on patent can be broken through with the change of historical conditions, increase of technological communications and maturity of legal system. The second, This part summarizes the methods and approaches of breaking through the regional jurisdiction according to western countries’practice, and discusses the feasibility and rationality of exercising transnational jurisdiction on patent disputes. The third, the dissertation respectively discusses the jurisdiction of validity dispute, infringement dispute and contract dispute of patent from two aspects of theory and practice, emphatically analyzes some special problems such as forum shopping, consolidation of jurisdictions and the effectiveness of contractual jurisdiction clause on infringement and the validity of patent, and puts forward some suggestions.The fourth chapter basically expounds on some unified judicial arrangements about transnational patent litigation system taken by EU in order to avoid the disadvantages caused by scattered jurisdiction and to realize the coherence of the judges. In order to conform to the integration of application procedures and substantial provisions of patent in Europe, EPO and EU put forward the proposals of establishing the unified patents court so as to realize the integration of judicial protection and proceedings. In this regard, EPO puts forward the draft of European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) and proposed to establish the European Patent Court to solve the European patent disputes, while European Community proposed to establish Community Patent Court in the draft of Community Patent Regulation (CPR) in order to solve community patent disputes. The two court systems overlap in certain area but differ mutualy, so it is of a dilemma to make them coordinated and harmonized in the areas of European patent litigation. This chapter will mainly introduce and evaluate the draft of EPLA and the draft of CPR, compares and studys problems such as institution, the selection of judges, jurisdiction, appeal, language and the main obstacles in two kinds of different court system, and research the possibility and methods of harmonizing them. This chapter will also introduce and evaluate the latest Protocol of Draft Agreement on the European and Community Patents Court, and analyze its effect and function of coordinating and consolidating the European Patent Court and Community Patent Court.The fifth chapter that is also conclusion mainly summarizes the challenges that the EU patent litigation system may encounter in the future and makes a prognosis about the development trend of EU patent litigation system from three aspects.