Comments on the Unified Patent Court’s (UPC) choice to grant Mathys & Squire’s access to evidence in a Unified Patent Court case between Astellas and Healios

Background

Mathys & Squire, the mental property legislation agency, had introduced a check case to try to enhance the transparency of the operations of the UPC.

In latest selections, the UPC had been limiting the access of third events to pleadings and evidence in UPC circumstances that ought to have been accessible on request.

The rules of openness and transparency in court docket proceedings and the rights of third events to access public paperwork are well-established rules in International and European legislation.

The UPC is a new court docket system (simply over a 12 months outdated) that may have the energy to implement patents throughout a lot of the European Union.

Comments from Nicholas Fox, Partner at Intellectual Property Law agency Mathys & Squire: “We are delighted that the Unified Patent Court has lastly granted our request to access the pleadings on this case.

“However, the manner by which our request has been processed nonetheless raises important concerns about the UPC’s dedication to transparency and open justice.

“It has taken greater than eight months for the court docket to course of our request. The exceptionally sluggish processing of the request has delayed our access till after the underlying case was settled.

“The Judge-Rapporteur has previously stated an intent that the access request would be processed “expeditiously” as quickly as an enchantment relating to one other doc access request had been concluded. Those enchantment proceedings concluded on 10 April, and but the court docket has taken greater than 4 months to course of our software and situation a choice granting our access request.

“So far, the UPC has yet to grant access to written pleadings and evidence in a case prior to an underlying matter being concluded.”