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Thursday, October 12, 2006

European Parliament Adopting a Resolution on the Future of the European Patent Policy.

The European Parliament today has adopted a resolution on the future of the European patent policy. According to FFII, the

wording finally adopted has been

amended in order to emphasise certain concerns. In particular, Parliament considers that

the proposed text of EPLA needs significant improvements which address concerns about democratic control, judicial independence and litigation costs. A

more radical draft dismissing the EPLA as proposed by by the Solialists together with the Greens did not get a majority. The well-known activist Mr. Florian Müller

writes:

"[...] The good news is that the EP is the first institution to have raised major objections concerning the draft EPLA in its present form. The bad news is that the EP stopped short of throwing a spanner in the EPLA works, and we yet have to find the first political body to oppose the EPLA in stronger terms.

Nobody can seriously claim victory or concede defeat based on today's parliamentary decision, which keeps all options open for the future. For a moment I thought to myself that this is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. However, we don't know how much time we'll actually get before it's too late. If we don't manage to turn things around in the very near term, the process may still take very long for procedural and legalistic reasons but the tsunami may become unstoppable (even though it would still take a lot of time to hit the beach). In that respect, the glass that looks half-full is actually half-empty. [...]"

Well, today's resolution of the European Parliament is somewhat vague as well as legally non-binding. However, nevertheless it might exert some influence on political proceedings in future.

Anyway, the users of the European patent system

have made clear that they want to see a bundle made up of EPLA plus London Agreement, and Mr. McCreevy appears to be ready to give his support. And today the European Parliament has signaled its general endorsement - albeit on the condition of certain improvements of the overall architecture of the European patent system to be established. There is a smell of distrust towards the European Patent Office because of it is, on the political level, not controlled by the European Parliament and/or by other EU bodies but by an

Administrative Council made up of representatives of the Governments of the

EPC Member States. And, the organisatorical embedding of the Boards of Appeal within the European Patent Office also causes some concerns. Perhaps such concerns might not only have some influence on future negotiations concerning the EPLA but also on the question of whether or not the Boards of Appeal should be separated from the European Patent Office. But that might turn out to be pure speculation.

See also

here,

here, and

there. Heise Newsticker has

another report but in German only.

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