EU Unitary Patent System

The purpose of this book is to explore the key substantive, methodological, and institutional issues raised by the proposed EU unitary patent system contained in EU Regulations 1257/2012 and 1260/2012, and the Unified Patent Court Agreement 2013. The originality of this work lies in its uniquely broad approach, taking seven different (historical, constitutional, international, competition, economic, institutional, and forward-looking) perspectives on the proposed EU patent system. This means that the book offers a multi-authored and all round appraisal of the proposed unitary system from experts in patent law, EU constitutional law, private international law, competition law, and economics, as well as leading figures from the worlds of legal practice, the bench, and the European Patent Office. The unitary patent system raises issues of foundational importance in the fields of patent and intellectual property law, EU law and legal harmonization, which it is the purpose of the book to engage with. This is a work which will enjoy wide and enduring interest among academics, policy makers and decision makers/practitioners working in patent law, intellectual property law, legal harmonization, and EU law.