UNIFIED
From local diversity to transnational institutionalization: The emergence of the European Unified Patent Court
From local diversity to transnational institutionalization: The emergence of the European Unified Patent Court
© Tingey Injury Law Firm
Although the European patent for the protection of intellectual property was introduced in 1973, uniform jurisdiction for the defense of intellectual property rights at the European level was only introduced in 2023. The UNIFIED project focuses on the current process of institutional convergence between regionally and nationally varying intellectual property regimes and the emergence of a new transnational institution: the Unified Patent Court (UPC). It is dedicated to the two leading continental European intellectual property regimes: France and Germany. The project pursues two research questions: First, how do institutional practices and the interpretation of legal norms differ between the regional and national jurisdictions in France and Germany? Second, through which mechanisms do norm interpretation and judicial practices converge towards a unified European jurisdiction? UNIFIED answers these questions through a neo-structural understanding of institutionalization that integrates institutional and network-based approaches. UNIFIED will collect both substantive and relational primary data on a judicial elite in Europe and contribute to a better understanding of how a transnational institution can emerge from a geographically fragmented institutional diversity through the example of an in-vivo process.
UNIFIED is a project of the University of Heidelberg, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Johannes Glückler.