There was no mention of a recent proposal by Commissioner Charlie McCreevy to focus on creating one single patent litigation system. The European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) was thought up by the European Patent Office but last month
The patent maze
The tangled web of patent law across Europe may be good for lawyers, but it is a nightmare for patent holders, and those wishing to challenge them.
There is the European Patent, granted centrally by the European Patent Office and applicable in all countries signed up to the European Patent Convention (in effect, across most of Europe). However, litigation has to be conducted separately in each state under local law.
One proposed solution is a Community Patent enforceable under European Union law. That idea has been running seriously since 1973, and still shows no sign of being accepted.
The European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) tries to do the same thing, in a different way, creating a central judicial system for litigation around the European Patent. A working party charged with drafting the agreement started work in 1999.
He saw this as a pragmatic step forward, since three decades of efforts to create a single Community Patent for the Union have amounted to nothing, mainly because the countries in the Union have never been able to agree on what languages patents should be published in. But the proposal is still controversial (see Box).
On Friday Finnish prime minister Matti Vanhanen, who was chairing the summit, said after the meeting that progress on reforming the patent regime is essential for Europe’s ability to compete. “The patent system must be made less expensive and less complicated,” he said at a press conference.
He said all leaders agreed on the need to move forward. One way was to simplify the existing EPO-run system by reaching agreement on languages by ratifying the so-called London Agreement, he said.
This agreement would require patents to be available in one of the three official languages – English, French and German – rather than in all 11 languages in the Union.
French ‘non’
The only obstacle to the London Agreement being ratified is France. EPO president Alain Pompidou said in an interview earlier this week he is confident France will sign up to the agreement very soon.
Vanhanen made no mention of the EPLA, which commissioner McCreevy has spent so much time pursuing since the summer.
In July the Commission invited patent experts, academics and companies to a hearing on the future of the Union’s patent regime. Many participants urged the Commission to pursue the EPLA instead of the Community Patent, which they feared would get bogged down in a lobbying war.
But national governments remain committed to the Community Patent. “This is our ultimate goal,” Vanhanen said.
“I wanted the member states [of the European Union] today to accept the pragmatic approach to patents, involving communitisation of things that happen already,” said José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president. Communitisation means converting non-EU treaties and laws into EU legislation.
“We will come forward with proposals by next spring,” he said, adding: “I can’t say what the upshot of this will be.”
Strong backing for institute
Barroso said he got “strong backing” for the European Institute of Technology – a project he has personally invested enormous political capital in. “I was very happy,” he said when he heard reactions to his plans for the institute.
“There are many open questions at this stage but the discussion today amounted to a green light for the Commission’s proposal,” Vanhanen said.
He added that the Finnish government will start work on the plan during the remainder of its six months at the helm of the European Union. “We are pleased we will be able to start working on this proposal during our presidency,” he said.
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