Belgian UPC case dropped

27.05.2015

A constitutional challenge by The European Software Market Association (ESOMA) and other plaintiffs, filed earlier this year in Belgium, was declared inadmissible on 21 May 2015. In April 2015, we reported that ESOMA argued that the unitary patent and UPC legislation violated the Belgian Constitution, denied Belgians a level playing field before the law and raised issues regarding the Belgian Constitution (which protects the language rights of Belgians).

Following the dismissal of Spain’s CJEU action on 5 May 2015, a lot of the arguments became less relevant, but nevertheless, the action was dismissed due to non-observance of time limits: the deadline for a constitutional nullity action against a law ratifying a treaty in Belgium must be filed within sixty days of the publication of the law and the Belgian publication of the UPC Agreement was published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 9 September 2014. Thus the action was filed too late and another obstacle to the progress of the Unitary patent/UPC Agreement has been cleared.

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