Latvian parliament to consider draft legislation to ratify the Agreements on the UPC and its Nordic-Baltic regional division

29.11.2016

The Latvian government recently submitted to the Saeima (Latvia’s unicameral parliament) draft legislation necessary to ratify the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Agreement on a Nordic-Baltic regional division of the UPC (which Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have signed).  The two bills (in Latvian here and here) were filed on 11 November 2016, and have been referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee for examination.  Following their parliamentary reading and approval, the bills will require presidential assent prior to their entry into force.  Latvia will then have to deposit its instrument of ratification of the UPC Agreement with the General Secretariat of the EU Council for that to take effect.

The explanatory memorandum accompanying the bill on ratification of the Agreement on a Nordic-Baltic regional division states that cases allocated to Latvia (under the Declaration to the Agreement) may be heard in existing court facilities, although it does not clarify which facilities would be used.  A possible candidate would be the Riga City Vidzeme District Court, which is currently exclusively competent to deal with proceedings involving patent disputes in Latvia.

Andrew Bowler

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