No unitary patent before establishment of unified court, advises Advocate General

Advocate General Bot's combined Opinion today in Case C-146/13 Spain v Parliament and Council and C-147/13 Spain v Council was directed principally at Spain's challenges to the legality of Regulation 1257/2012 on the unitary patent. However, his stance -- which is likely to be accepted by the Court of Justice of the European Union -- also makes reference to the Unified Patent Court. This can be seen from the following extract of the Curia media release issued this morning:

Spain claims that the regulation [on the unitary patent] provides for a specific judicial regime for the European patent with unitary effect which is contained in the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. It claims that the content of that agreement affects the Union’s powers and confers on a third party the power to determine unilaterally the application of the regulation. The Advocate General takes the view that the Court does not have jurisdiction to review the content of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court in an action for annulment of the regulation. The Advocate General observes that the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court does not fall within any of the categories of acts the lawfulness of which is subject to judicial review by the Court. It is an intergovernmental agreement negotiated and signed only by certain Member States on the basis of international law. Moreover, the regulation does not approve an international agreement or implement such an agreement, but is intended to implement enhanced cooperation in the area of creation of unitary patent protection.  

Spain claims that the application of the regulation is absolutely dependent on the entry into force of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, and that the effectiveness of the power exercised by the European Union through the contested regulation thus depends on the will of the Member States which are party to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. The Advocate General states that the EU legislature provided for the establishment of a court having jurisdiction in respect of European patents with unitary effect, to be governed by an instrument setting up a unified patent litigation system for European patents and European patents with unitary effect. The EU legislature considered that the establishment of such jurisdiction was essential in order to ensure the proper functioning of the European patent with unitary effect, consistency of case-law and hence legal certainty. In the Advocate General’s view, the objective of the regulation is to ensure such proper functioning. It would be contrary to such principles to apply the contested regulation when the Unified Patent Court has not yet been established.  

The principle of sincere cooperation requires the participating Member States to take all appropriate measures to implement enhanced cooperation, including ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, as such ratification is necessary for its implementation. By refraining from ratifying the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court, the participating Member States would infringe the principle of sincere cooperation in that they would be jeopardising the attainment of the Union’s harmonisation and uniform protection objectives. Moreover, the link between the regulation and the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court is such that it would have been inconsistent not to make the application of the contested regulation conditional on the entry into force of that agreement.