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Athens Bar Association calls for further consultation on UPC legislation

07.08.2017

On 4 August 2017, the Athens Bar Association published a letter to the Greek Minister of Economy requesting a delay in Greece’s ratification of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA).  The letter claims that the government should have consulted with the Athens Bar Association prior to adopting a position on this matter, and that stakeholders did not have sufficient time to submit comments on the draft legislation to ratify the UPCA.  The letter therefore asks the government to put ratification on hold and to carry out further consultation and analysis on the impact of the new system on Greece’s economy and legal order.

As reported here, on 1 March 2017 the Greek government announced the successful completion of a consultation process on its draft bill on ratification of the UPCA, launched in its open government portal and advertised on the website of the Industrial Property Organisation (the Greek Patent Office).  The government has also commissioned, in May 2017, a study to assess the impact of unitary patent protection on the Greek economy.  The ratification bill, which proposes the creation of a local division of the UPC in Greece, has not yet been introduced in the Greek parliament for debate, but on 27 March 2017 Greece signed the Protocol on Provisional Application of the UPCA.

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Dominic Adair

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