Milan replaces London as the third seat of the Central Division of the Unified Patent Court

The Administrative Committee of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) has announced an agreement that a third seat of the Central Division of the Court will be established in Milan.

Readers may recall that there was to be a seat of the Court in London, which was to hear cases relating to IPC Class A (Human necessities) and Class C (Chemistry, metallurgy). These competencies are now to be split, so that Milan is responsible for Class A and Munich gets Class C, except that (in either case) where a supplementary protection certificate (SPC) is invoked, Paris is responsible.

So the new disposition is as follows:

• Milan Section: (A) Human necessities, without SPC;
• Paris Seat: (B) Performing operations, transporting; (D) Textiles, paper; (E) Fixed constructions; (G) Physics; (H) Electricity; Supplementary protection certificates;
• Munich Section: (C) Chemistry, metallurgy, without SPC; (F) Mechanical engineering, lighting, heating, weapons, blasting.

This decision will take effect on 26 June 2024. This gives time for the Milan Section to be set up and also, being an amendment to the UPC Agreement resulting from agreement between France, Germany and Italy, it gives other member states an opportunity to declare their disagreement. In the meantime it allows preparatory work to begin. A review of the implementation of this decision will be held 3 years later (rather than in 7 years as provided for by Article 87(1)).