17th Draft Rules of Procedure of the UPC

The UPC Preparatory Committee’s 17th draft Rules of Procedure of the UPC have been published together with the Committee’s explanatory note.

Changes in short:

Bifurcation – removing the “injunction gap”. Amended provisions require the central division to endeavour to hear bifurcated validity proceedings referred to it before the infringement hearing in the local or regional division, rather than potentially much later.

Procedural Appeals – the new draft of the relevant rule (220.2) clarifies that the Court of Appeal may give permission to hear procedural appeals.

Language Regime – a new rule 14 allows for proceeding to be conducted in an “official language” or an “additional language”, with certain exceptions, which include the “small local operator” clause which protects locally
operating defendants to ensure that they will only be sued in the “home” language.

A public consultation on the new draft will be held on 26 November 2014 in Trier, Germany; a webcast of the event is also planned.