Lisbon: All Change
My first inkling that the Lisbon Treaty was not something that IP practitioners could ignore was when I saw the following paragraph in the EPO's press release on the "EU patent" of 18 Dec 2009: "With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union replaced and succeeded the European Community and has been endowed with legal personality. Therefore, the Community patent is now called the "EU patent" and the European and Community Patent's Court (ECPC)" has been renamed the "European and European Union Patent's Court (EEUPC)". The reason for my double take was that the EU has been in existence ever since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 but we never hear talk of an "EU trade mark" or a "registered European Union design" so I had a look at the Competitiveness Council's proposal. Sure enough, I found the following words "In view of the entry into force on 1 December 2009 of the Lisbon Treaty, the...