Swedes claim breakthrough on patents

But relief will not be instant. If all goes smoothly, Swedish Trade Minister Ewa Björling estimates the system could be up and running in three years. And unanimity was achieved by sidelining the thorny and costly matter of translating patents into different languages, leaving unresolved an issue that could yet be a stumbling block to progress.

“We have now a realistic opportunity to change a patent system that creates strong competitive disadvantages for the European economy,” said Günther Verheugen, the EU’s commissioner for Enterprise and Industry.

The next steps along this long and winding road will be a debate in the European Parliament on the EU patent regulation, a legal opinion on the proposed new court from the European Court of Justice and proposals from the European Commission on a separate piece of regulation to cover translation arrangements.

These steps will probably be carried out “within a year” and then it will be “a couple more years” before the system is up and running, said Björling.

Given the failed attempts to create a European Community patent for more than 40 years, not everyone is as optimistic. “It is a step forward, but we don’t know how many more steps are still needed and how long they will take,” said Bruno van Pottelsberghe, senior fellow at Bruegel and professor at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.

For van Pottelsberghe, hiving off the issue of translation is simply avoiding the tough decisions. “You cannot create a Community patent without solving the language issues. That’s central,” he said.

Eurochambres, the association of European chambers of commerce and industry, welcomed the progress made by ministers, but also underlined the language question “We have won an important battle, but not yet the war,” said Eurochambres Secretary General Arnaldo Abruzzini. “Translation into all EU languages currently impacts enormously on the overall cost of patenting inventions in Europe.  It is not sustainable that a company cannot protect an invention on the whole EU territory for less than €70,000 while this costs around €20,000 in the US and even less in Japan.”

The European Commission was keen to point out the savings of having a unified patent court, which would mean parties do not have to litigate in parallel in different countries. European companies would save as much as €289 million a year, according to the Commission. The single court would try cases on both the EU patent and existing European patents.

The Competitiveness Council, which deals with internal market, industry and research matters, also debated last week the research and innovation priorities in the post-2010 Lisbon strategy. Ministers agreed that a review is needed of the EU financing framework in order to achieve “a risk-tolerant and trust-based approach” for managing research funding. They also agreed that Europe has many opportunities to take a leading role in ICT, for example in addressing emerging challenges such as the transition to an eco-efficient economy or sustainable health care for an ageing population.  

Read the Competitiveness Council’s conclusions: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/intm/111732.pdf