Federal Government continues on all Levels to advocate Munich as Seat of the Central Division

As recently reported on the ksnh::law blog in an article titled "German Federal Government Strongly Advocates Munich as Seat of Central Divison of EU Unified Patent Court", a written parliamentary question in the German Parliament/Bundestag by MP Doris Barnett (Social Democrats) gave the Federal Government the opportunity to take a public position on the efforts undertaken to bring the seat of the Central Division of a future Unified Patent Court to Germany (question 50 of Drucksache 17/8723; in German). Dr Max Stadler, Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Justice under Minster Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (both Liberals), answered the question as follows (cf. Plenarprotokoll 17/161, page 1919 onwards; in German): [...] The Federal Government strongly advocates in the negotiations that the seat of the Central Division will be in Munich. As the European capital city of patents Munich is best suited for the headquarters of the Patent Court. The European Patent Office, which will grant EU patents, has its headquarters here. The required technical skills of judges and attorneys/lawyers are available here in particular. France has also applied for the seat (Paris). The overall agreement largely depends on the seat of the Central Division. The Federal Government will continue on all levels to advocate Munich as the seat of the Central Division. The decentralized structure of the Court provides that patent infringement cases are brought before Local or Regional Division residing in the Member States. It can be taken for granted that the Local Divisions located in Germany will have a significant proportion of the total volume of litigations. While the German government claimed the seat of a European Patent Court already in the times of the "Community Patent Convention", London wa put on the agenda only upon intervention of the UK legal profession and Paris was considered a compromise location to prevent a deadlock. However, as has been summarised recently “few other EU countries are happy with a Munich seat because the city is already the home to EPO“, “Britain lacks goodwill and allies“, and “French inflexibility has been damaging“ (see here). As analysed in the article "Munich or London? The new EU Patent System will now have to be saved by Angela Merkel and David Cameron personally", the Germany government's chances to succeed in this game depend on political dynamics, the current distribution of po…