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Monday, January 16, 2006

FT.com: Mr. Charlie McCreevy Undertaking 'One Final Effort' to Create a Low-Cost EU Patent.

Mr. Tobias Buck

writes in

FT.com:

"[...] Charlie McCreevy, the European Union internal market commissioner, will on Monday launch an initiative to help European companies secure better protection for their intellectual property.

Mr McCreevy wants to make 'one final effort' to resolve years of deadlock over the creation of a low-cost EU-wide patent, in an effort to bridge the innovation gap between Europe and the US. [...] Mr McCreevy will begin a formal round of consultations with businesses and other interested parties in order to fine-tune the Commission's patents policy.

The consultation document, a copy of which has been seen by the Financial Times, seeks responses on issues ranging from patent litigation to mutual recognition of different national patents and even possible improvements to the proposed EU-wide community patent. [...]"

Mr. McCreevy had already

announced this move in 2005:

"[...] Accordingly, I would like to use the next three months to launch and engage in a dialogue to determine what might usefully be done to provide Europe with a sound IPR framework. [...]"

This has now is now been tagged as a 'final' attempt, and Mr. McCreevy surely will not try again anything like this during his term of Office should he fail now. The outcome will most probably not only depend on the high-level diplomacy on the language issue (you remember: how many languages to translate a EU Community Patent, and the legal status of such translations) but partly also on how strong the various grassroots organisations of the anti-patent movement will perform with regard to this issue.

I further guess that the industry will give a warm welcome to the EU Community Patent if and only if:

No translation requirements at all, or, at most, requirement of translation of EU Community Patents into English;
No EU-wide centralised court for the first instance of infringement and cancellation cases; and
There is a binding assertion that also in future for applicants there will be a free choice between the "conventional" EPO patent and the EU Community Patent.

We shall wait and see.

[UPDATE_0] 2005-01-16 The Official Questionnaire "On the patent system in Europe" can be viewed

here. It offers a pretty broad range of questions, touching the fundamentals of patent law as well as approximation and mutual recognition of national patents. On the basis of the feedback the Commission intends to organise a hearing in Brussels in early summer 2006. The consultation is open to all, and will be closed on 31 March 2006. The Commission services will publish a report on the outcome of this consultation. It will be available on the Internal Market and Services Directorate's General website. A RAPID press statement is available

here.

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Patents, European Commission, EU Community Patent

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Monday, January 16, 2006

FT.com: Mr. Charlie McCreevy Undertaking 'One Final Effort' to Create a Low-Cost EU Patent.

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