Ingve Stjerna (Rechtsanwalt, Düsseldorf), "Unitary patent" and court system - Law-making in camera.
"As it is well known, the “unitary patent“ package has been adopted and now the ratification of the intergovernmental Agreement on the court system by a certain quorum of the Member States is necessary for the “unitary patent“ system to enter into force. Less well known is the fact that, during the legislative process, circumstances were withheld from the public which the political front apparently regarded as dangerous for the entry into force of the “legislative package”. An exemplary case is Council document 15856/11, an opinion of the Council’s Legal Service on the compatibility of the “unitary patent” court system’s amended structure with opinion 1/09 of the European Court of Justice (CJEU). Until very recently, this document was available to the public only in extensively blackened form. Requests for complete access to the document filed on the basis of EC Regulation No 1049/2001 were repeatedly refused on the ground that this could delay the ratification process in the Member States or even call into question the entry into force of the Agreement. The document, additional parts of which were made accessible to the public shortly before the publication of this article, shows why: In it, the Legal Service notes that the structure of the adopted court system may still violate European law. A report on the strange understanding of transparency and democracy exercised in the legislative proceedings for the “unitary patent” package."
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B912642
