Progress since the beginning of this year, “provides grounds for optimism that solutions can be found for both the patent litigation system and the Community Patent," the Slovenes say in a progress report due to be submitted to government ministers at the end of May.
The ministers will be asked to take note of the progress made and to continue work on both separate but parallel dossiers, “with a view to resolving the outstanding issues and reaching an agreement in both areas as soon as possible,” the report concludes.
Two main obstacles remain in the way of agreeing a Community patent: translation arrangements and the question of how to distribute revenue from patent renewal fees. The question of translations has been the bugbear since the beginning of this three decades-long story.
The cost is…too high
Each country in the Union wants its scientists and technicians to be able to file for a patent in its own language, but a system that respects all languages would be prohibitively expensive and would deter all but the biggest and wealthiest companies from using the patent system.
No one has been able to resolve this conundrum until now. But according to Ilias Konteas, an advisor on intellectual property issues for the employers trade group, Business Europe, the EU is now tantalisingly close to a breakthrough, thanks to a smart but simple idea: using an automated translation system. The idea is that automated translations would create texts in all languages but that these texts wouldn't be legally binding – they would only be used for reference purposes.
The only country to oppose this idea is Spain, which has fought hardest against plans to simplify the linguistic requirements of the patent system. The country argues that Spanish is a more important language than both French and German, two of the official languages of the European patent system (the other being English), because of its use in Latin America. It fears that if patents aren’t available in Spanish, then Spain will become an economic backwater.
Spain to the rescue?
But the arrival last month of a new Spanish minister in charge of science and innovation, molecular biologist Cristina Garmendia, gives reason to hope for a change in the Spanish position, Konteas said.
“The Spanish government seems ready to change the focus of the economy from tourism and construction towards innovation-led pursuits. They seem to be going in the right direction.”
On the issue of distributing renewal fees, the Slovene presidency has tabled several suggestions, all focused on trying to keep costs down for SMEs, but none has gained much of a following to date.
“We put forward a number of new suggestions taking into consideration the size of the market, the level of patent activity (in each country) and the improvement of access of SMEs to the patent system,” the Slovenian government writes in its progress report.
France, which assumes the presidency on July 1 appears confident that it can pick up where Slovenia left off. “This is a good working base for us,” said a French diplomat who asked not to be named.
France will focus mainly on solving the language question. “Concerning language use, we have not yet reached an acceptable formulation,” the diplomat said.
Where current events allow, each incoming EU presidency tries to pick policy areas that can be advanced in a tangible way, so that at the end of its six months in charge, it has something to brag about. This may explain why France is concentrating on the language question, observers suspect.
There's little mention of the distribution of renewal fees and even less talk about reforming the litigation system,"” one European Commission official said, asking not to be named.
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