Hotting up in the chilly north: Nordic-Baltic pact to forge UPC regional division

Who's in, who's out?

On 4 March 2014 Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed an agreement to establish a Nordic-Baltic regional division of the Unified Patent Court. Finland and Denmark, originally involved in the negotiations, have since dropped out and it is thought that those countries are currently considering the alternative of national local divisions. The March 2014 agreement does not however preclude Unified Patent Court member states signing up at a later stage.

The main features of the agreement are these:

* English will be the only language of proceedings;
* Stockholm will be its seat ...
* ... but cases will be heard elsewhere to the greatest extent possible.

This new court structure might be implemented as early mid-2015; it will thus be operational around the same time as the Unified Patent Court comes into effect.

Source: "Sweden and Baltic states form Unified Patent Court regional division", by Sara Ulfsdotter (Advokatfirman Lindahl KB), posted on International Law Office, 7 April 2014