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Simon Holzer
Ulrike Ciesla
In an eagerly awaited ruling published on 9 July 2021, the German Federal Constitutional Court rejected two applications for preliminary injunctions directed against the German Act of Approval that was adopted on 18 December 2020 for the purposes of ratifying the Agreement of 19 February 2013 on a Unified Patent Court (UPC).
A link to the ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court can be found here. The Court’s press release can be found here.
In its reasoning, the German Federal Constitutional Court states that the constitutional complaints lodged in the main proceedings are inadmissible as the complainants failed to sufficiently assert and substantiate a possible violation of their fundamental rights.
The UPC is a court common to its contracting member states and it will have exclusive competence in respect of European patents and European patents with unitary effect. The exclusive competence is however subject to exceptions during a transitional period.
Following the ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court, it can be assumed that the UPC will become active not very late in 2022.
