Time to train Europe's new patent judges -- but how?

Cats make excellent trainers.  In the picture above, Bubbles teaches a human how
to hold a hoop steady with just one hand so that she can jump through it

Reality asserts itself. This Kat has received from the UPC Training Conference Team at the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO),  the following missive:

Please be kindly informed that the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice and the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, in cooperation with the European Patent Office, jointly organise a conference on the training of the Unified Patent Court’s judges. 

The conference will take place in conjunction with the inauguration of the building of the Training Centre in Budapest. 

When? 13-14 March 2014 

Please save these dates in your calendar of next year. We will keep you updated on the programme and further details of the event. 

Naturally this Kat, with some four decades of experience in the field of intellectual property training (including the training of judges), will be delighted to make the pages of this weblog available to the three substantial and celebrated bureaucracies which between them bear the burden of turning good and decent humans into Unified Patent Court (UPC) judges.  Merpel goes even further, setting out suggestions as to some of the essential elements of any training programme for the UPC judiciary -- though she doubts that any people who spend year after year learning the law and decades practising their skills will be turned into fully-functioning UPC judges in just two days, particularly in view of the high quality of the Hungarian hospitality she has enjoyed in the past.

Merpel recommends at least the following modules:

* interpretation of claims [particularly travel and expenses claims]

* interim procedures [since the time-lag between appointment as a UPC judge and getting a chance to do some judging may be quite extensive]

* stays [the hotels in Munich have much to comment them, apparently, but Paris is more fun ...]

* protectable subject matter [pension rights, holiday entitlements, displaced judges' allowances, etc]

* anger management [given the recent history of the European patent package, this module should be self-explanatory]

Readers are welcome to offer their own suggestions.