KIANEWS Nokia and Airbus have been selected as judges in the Unified Patent Court
17. 11. 2022 Thursday / By: Robert Denes / Industrial / Exact time: BST / Print this page
B russels, 16 November 2022 – Patent lawyers from Nokia and Airbus have been selected as part-time technical judges at the upcoming Unified Patent Court (UPC). Europe is witnessing a corporate takeover of its justice system. Being a "judge" in the morning and a "patent lawyer" in the afternoon.
Technical judges are part-time judges (half-judge, half-private company employee) without legal qualifications and usually patent attorneys working in law firms or patent departments of large corporations (Nokia, Airbus, 3M, Orange, Agfa). etc...).
FFII President Benjamin Henrion calls for their immediate removal: “Nokia as a part-time judge in the Unified Patent Court is a joke, right? Europe is witnessing a corporate takeover of its justice system. This is a frontal attack on the independence of the judge, and judges cannot receive any side salary. This is worse than the case of the Polish judges."
Nokia is a very active patent troll company and is eager to influence the Unified Patent Court to enforce software patents in Europe without any involvement of the European Court of Justice.
In the history of the project, there were rules that prohibited corporate capture of judges in the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) project that failed in 2004, and prohibited any ancillary, paid activities:
CHAPTER I JUDGES - Article 6 Incompatibility of other duties
(1) In addition to being members of other courts or appeal boards of the European Patent Office or national patent offices, the judges of the European Patent Court may not engage in gainful employment, unless the executive office grants permission to do so. Commission. They cannot hold political or administrative offices either.
– Draft of the Statute of the European Patent Court, Litigation Working Group, 16.2.2004.
https://www.uaipit.com/uploads/legislacion/files/1259753423_3_EPLA-20040216-Draft_Statute_of_EPCourt.pdfAt the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg, there is also case law (Grosam v. Czech Republic) on the violation of Article 6 (1) in relation to ancillary remuneration of judges:
(iii) Existence of guarantees against external pressure
134. Regarding the existence of guarantees against external pressure, the Court notes that two-thirds of the members of the chamber, the lay appraisers, worked and received their salaries abroad, which inevitably entailed their financial, hierarchical and administrative dependence on their primary employers, and thus could endanger their independence and their impartiality (see Oleksandr Volkov, cited above, § 113).
- Grosam v Czech Republic, European Court of Human Rights, 2022 https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-217806%22]}
Countries participating in the Unified Patent Courts Agreement (UPCA) appear to be deliberately ignoring these rules, and some politicians want the agreement to enter into force at any cost.
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