Following recent announcements regarding the highly anticipated commencement of the UPC Agreement, which is now planned to come into force on the projected date of 1st April 2023, the UPC has confirmed the appointment of an initial 85 judges who will sit in its court. This includes the election of its Presidium of 8 presiding judges who will lead both the Court of Appeal and Court of First Instance, with Klaus Grabinski appointed as president of the Court of Appeal and Florence Butin taking on the role of president of the Court of First Instance.
As expected, the appointments include legally and technically qualified judges from across many of the member states of the UPC, including appointees from Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Bulgaria, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Estonia.
The appointment of the judges and Presidium of the UPC gives a first insight as to the how the court may be anticipated to apply and uphold the law, and it is exciting to see a diverse collection of nationalities, languages and backgrounds across both the legal and technical cohort bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the court. Despite this, with more than one third of its current make-up emanating from Germany, and another fifth from France, judges from these two countries alone make up more than half of the total representation. With judges expected to share "their own cultural background " it remains to be seen how much UPC case law may be led by the German or French national approaches and whether local divisions of the UPC based outside of France and Germany, including in Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Estonia will adopt a similar stance as case law handed down by the UPC judges develops.
Training for the 51 technically qualified judges has now commenced at the judicial court in Paris, and is scheduled to cover various aspects of the new court including judgecraft, patent law and mock trials.