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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Friday, February 02, 2007New Initiatives on European Patent Law Harmonisation Ahead?Ireland.com brings an article from Reuters:"[...] The European Commission will present new options to end a 20-year deadlock over patents, but plans for revamping a copyright tax are all but dead, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy said today. [...]"See also a report on TheParliament.com. Mr. McCreevy is reported to have characterised the present situation as: "The proposal for an EU-wide patent is stuck in the mud".Meanwhile, scepticism prevails elsewhere. Mr. Peter Groves is reporting in a very interesting posting on his blog that, at the occasion of a seminar on the Gowers Review recently held in London, Mr. Justice Pumphrey (UK) had described the EPLA as being in "a persistent vegetative state". According to his words, the problem stems from a dispute between the French Foreign Ministry and the judiciary. The London Agreement has been  approved by the French Conseil Constitutionel, but according to Mr. Pumphrey, is still unlikely to make much progress. Industry does not want the community patent, and 27 Member States do not want the EPLA. He is said to have referred to this as a minor, but important disaster.Mr. Roger Burt of IBM was said to have expressed reservations on work sharing between patent offices: it would be disastrous if the work of the USPTO were automatically to have world-wide currency, but if it meant that patent offices could concentrate on their own specialities, what would make sense. The Chinese patent office could search Chinese language patents, the JPO Japanese ones: the UK could play to its acknowledged strengths in biotechnology.Mr. Groves also reports that Mr. Burt deemed the EU Community Patent and the London Agreement as "fading". Moreover, As for the London Agreement, he feared that we might wait forever for France to sign up to using English, and might almost as well proceed without them. Mr. Groves reports that according to Mr. Burt's words, Ms. Beth Novek's misleadingly-named community patent review is supported by IBM, but TMPDF prefer to let the Americans try it out and find the problems before we give it a go. It would, Mr. Burt is said to have told, at least need some ground rules, a Code of Practice perhaps, lest applicants were to be drowned in citations of little or no relevance.Hence, there seem to be no real news so far: Europe appears not really to be ready for further progress in harmonisation of substantial IP laws. [UPDATE 2007-02-02] See also Mr. Joff Wild's comments on Mr. McCreevy's utterances:"[...] The problem in Europe, however, is that there are very strong vested interests with a huge stake in the system as it currently is. For example, if translations are less important moving forward, that is going to have a substantial impact on the income of many patent attorneys in many countries. Likewise a single European patent court is going to mean less litigation work for a large number of lawyers, while the availability of a patent that covers the whole of Europe spells danger for national patent offices. With all this in mind, let's consider who are among those most closely involved in the negotiation process. You've guessed it: national patent offices, patent attorneys and patent lawyers. Just what incentive do they have to find a way forward that will work? Throw in a very vocal and well organised lobby opposed to many forms of patenting on ideological grounds and you have a recipe for no meaningful progress at all. [...]What is to be said about that? I don't know if the patent attorneys are really such a strong factor in lobbying as Mr. Wild assumes. I am in doubt so far. Anyway, if patent attorneys could, for example, manage to tap the huge latent market of SMEs (who are currently widely absenting themselves from the patent system or have even decided to fight against it) by offering attractive new products (probably not merely the standard product of churning out patent applications) they perhaps might be able to compensate losses when translation requirements get reduced. Technorati Tags: Patents
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