(Publ. 2 JAN 2014) In an article in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (27 December 2013) Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Beatrice Ask, comments on Sweden’s future as an innovative country. Beatrice Ask writes that Sweden has innovations to thank for many of the country’s global business successes. She argues that the legal protection plays a key role in this, and the Swedish Government therefore proposes that a new court for intellectual property disputes should be established.
Today, intellectual property cases are divided between general courts (District Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court), administrative courts (The Administrative Court, The Administrative Courts of Appeal and The Supreme Administrative Court), as well as The Court of Patent Appeals and The Swedish Market Court. The Minister of Justice believes that this causes a number of problems, such as irregular outcomes, resource waste, and lack of experience sharing, and therefore proposes that a new court for intellectual property cases should be established.
Beatrice Ask ends the article by highlighting four areas where the Swedish government is working to improve the future for Swedish innovation companies:
- The common EU patent system (the Unitary Patent System), which will come into force in 2015.
- Patent applications in Sweden will be able to be submitted in English.
- A national survey of prosecution rules regarding patent infringement.
- An investigator shall propose a new Patents Law and a new regulation by June 2014.
The article in Svenska Dagbladet can be read in its entirety here (in Swedish).
