BLOG@IP::JUR

Patent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.

Disclaimer & About This Website

Visit the archives

Monday, December 10, 2007

Switzerland To Introduce Regulation For Patent Attorneys.

Switzerland has been an island of virtually unregulated professional representation of clients in patent related matters. This is about

to change now [In German only; sorry.]. The Swiss parliament has just passed a

Bill on Patent Attorneys [In German only; sorry] as well as another

Bill establishing a Federal Patents Court [In German only; sorry].

In short, also in future everybody will be entitled to sell professional services in IP-related matters but the label "Patentanwalt" will be reserved for those registered individuals having a certain educational background including a patent attorney's qualification examination. In the new Swiss Federal Patents Court, technical and non-technical judges together will hear the patent-related cases. Technical judges will be of a complimentary status and even patent examiners and patent attorneys might be considered unless a conflict of interest is to be assumed.

In

Switzerland (which does not for part of the

EU but is Member of

EFTA) they apparently had the same sort of a political debate on entitlement professional representation before the Swiss Federal Patents Court: At the beginning, the Draft Bill provided a general clause of entitlement for professional representation to general lawyers (Reschtsanwäte). It had been envisaged to give the Swiss Federal Patents Court the power to allow also professional representation en-bloc by the members of the new Patentanwalt profession. However, at the end of the day, this idea was waived, and the German-stlye approach was adopted: Patent Attorneys (Patentanwäte) are now admitted for professional representation in nullity proceedings only. In all other sorts of proceedings, in particular in infringement proveedings, they have a right to appear in court and must be heard there but there must be an umbrella representation by some general lawyer.

Technorati Tags:

Patents

[Permalink]