UPC makes long-awaited legal teams fix to CMS

The Unified Patent Court unveiled a new online function today, November 28, that will allow more representatives and their legal teams to work on cases.

The long-awaited tweak will come as a relief to users of the case management system (CMS) who had complained that only one representative could work on a case online.

Legal teams, including secretaries, experts, translators, as well as other lawyers and attorneys, will now be able to complete tasks associated with a case.

All team members will need user accounts backed up by strong authentication, which can be obtained from EU-approved providers.

Qualified representatives will still be the only ones able to lodge documents.

A user manual published today advises that teams include more than one representative.

According to the manual, a future patch to the CMS will allow teams to choose which representatives should receive notifications and indicate which representatives’ names should appear on documents created by the CMS.

A leading patent lawyer previously told Managing IP that the lack of a legal teams function was a “liability risk” for firms due to the burden on partners.

“I’m handling six UPC cases effectively as a solo practitioner because I’m the only one on my team who has access to the case file on the CMS,” Tilman Müller-Stoy, partner at Bardehle Pagenberg in Munich, said in September.

“If a brief comes in with 50 exhibits, I have to download and distribute all of them. If I miss something, then it’s missed.

“At the moment, these tasks are costing far too much time and money,” Müller-Stoy added.

Commenting to Managing IP today after the fix had been announced, Müller-Stoy said it "feels like Christmas has come early".