Yesterday, the Unified Patent Court has published the list of judges that have been appointed to take up duties as soon as the Court becomes operational, which is now expected to be on 1 April 2023.
The list contains a total of 85 judges. There are 34 legally qualified judges, among whom 27 are appointed to the Court of First Instance (distributed over the central, local and regional divisions) and 7 are appointed to the Court of Appeal. A few posts are still to be filled before the start of the Court’s operations.
51 technically qualified have been appointed. These are listed in 5 fields of technology: biotechnology (8 judges), chemistry and pharmaceutics (10 judges), electricity (9 judges), mechanical engineering (16 judges) and physics (8 judges). One of the technically qualified judges is EPLIT’s Board member Bernard Ledeboer.
Regarding diversity, many different nationalities of the Contracting Member States are represented. Germany ranks first with about 30% of the positions, followed by France (20%), Italy (13%) and the Netherlands (8%). About 1/3 of the judges are female.
The list is available on the UPC’s website here.