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Saturday, January 24, 2004

UK Patents Bill - More Insights.

In an

earlier posting I reported about a

Bill pending in the UK parliament that aims to enable the UK Patent Office to provide an independent non-binding opinion on patent validity or infringement to settle disputes over patent rights without parties having to resort to expensive litigation.

Today I have spotted another

Document explaining the aims of that Bill more in detail. "Patent holders currently generally employ several professionals - patent agents, and often solicitors and barristers too - and go through the full hearing-decision-appeal process (the costs of which are generally greater in the High Court than before the comptroller or in the Patents County Court) before they will receive any compensation for an infringement of their patent. However, by this time it is often too late as they have lost market share for the patented product and this may never be recovered. [...] A recent DTI economics paper concluded that the costs to a company of identifying infringement and enforcement can act as a deterrent. [...] If nothing is done, this high level of dissatisfaction will continue and may dissuade companies from making effective use of patents which could in turn lead to less certainty about rewards for innovation and so reductions in the investment in R&D in UK businesses. Ultimately this could lead to a reduction in the UK’s international competitiveness", the paper concludes. The remedy is seen as follows: "[...] Providing low-cost neutral assessment of validity and/or infringement instead of (or prior to) any proceedings taking place could encourage early settlement of disputes at lower cost and so benefit all. "

No doubt, patent agents / attorneys, solicitors, etc. are absolutely well prepared to provide opinions on validity and infringement. Why all that fuss? The keyword is "low-cost". It appears to be that patent attorneys / agents, solicitors, barristers etc. are considered as being too expensive, and the competent courts as being too slow. The UK Patent Office is deemed to be "low-cost" and "fast".

How to accomplish that? Perhaps by (hidden) subsidies lowering the costs of such undertakings of the Patent Office?

BTW, as a German Patentanwalt and European Patent and Trade Mark Attorney I do not see that I would be directly affected by the Bill that is currently pending in the UK. But I guess that the UK Parliament is playing only the role of a vanguard for a pan-European tendency coming within a decade or so.

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