Mixed Reactions To EU Patent Agreement

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

17 March 2003

Reactions from European businesses have been mixed to the announcement earlier this month that agreement has been reached over the creation of an EU-wide patent and the establishment of a European patent office in Luxembourg.

In a statement released following the announcement, UNICE, the union of industrial and employers' confederations of Europe took issue with three areas of the new agreement, according to a report from CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Centre.

With regard to the jurisdictional system for the patent, UNICE announced that it welcomed the creation of a single court for the EU patent, but suggested that the seven year transition period to the new system will be bad for legal certainty.

Although initial patent applications need only be submitted in one of the three official languages of the European Patent Office - namely English, German, or French - successful claims must be filed in all official EU languages at the applicant's expense. According to CORDIS, the industry body argued earlier this month that this represents an unreasonable and prohibitive expense which will be felt most keenly by small businesses and research centres.

Thirdly, the CORDIS report revealed: 'Regarding the relationship between national patent offices and the EPO, while UNICE supports the fact that the EPO alone will be responsible for examining applications and granting Community patents, their statement expresses 'serious concern' that national patent offices could be called upon to carry out search work on the EPO's behalf', which, UNICE argued, could affect the quality of the Community patent system.

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