Background
Under Article 64(3) EPC, any infringement of a European patent is dealt with under national law. Additionally, once the 9 month opposition period under Article 99 EPC has expired, there is no centralised way of challenging the validity of a granted patent.
Furthermore, Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 "on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters" does not adequately deal with the particular complications thrown up by intellectual property disputes. Such disputes are typically based on parallel national rights rather than European-wide rights.
As a consequence, parties wishing to litigate a patent often find themselves in the unsatisfactory position of having to litigate as much about where and when disputes should be heard and decided as about the real underlying dispute.
Read more about this topic: European Patent Litigation Agreement
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)