In this paper, on the basis of the Working Party discussions, the Presidency considers that considerable progress has been achieved in producing a right basis for further work with respect to the features of a jurisdiction for European and future Community patents:
"[...] 5. The essence of the progress achieved to date is reflected in document 14492/07. While a number of delegations still have reservations, it is broadly acknowledged that all the key issues for a future patent litigation system have been addressed in that document and that discussions are heading in the right direction. The Presidency underlines the constructive and positive climate in the Working Party and acknowledges the efforts made by all Member States, with no exception.
6. While there appears to be broad agreement on most of the key features set out in the working document, there remain some issues which need to be discussed further. This concerns, in particular, the so-called split arrangement between infringement and invalidity actions at first instance level, and the language arrangements in judicial proceedings.
7. As a first step, the Working Party agreed to concentrate all efforts on arriving at a common understanding on the architecture and main features of the future patent litigation system. Once further consensus has been reached on the jurisdictional system, solutions for the Community patent will be explored since a number of Member States consider that the jurisdictional system and the Community patent should form a package. The question of the appropriate legal basis and the choice of the right legal instruments will then have to be properly addressed.
8. As a result of the combined synergies of all delegations, there has been an ongoing process of improvement, clarification and fine-tuning of the Presidency working document. Further suggestions for technical improvements and clarifications have been made at the Working Party meeting on 7 November 2007 and will be addressed in a further revised working document for discussion at the next meeting of the Working Party. [...]"
On the basis of such findings, COREPER is therefore invited by the Portuguese EU Presidency to take note of this progress report and agree that this be submitted to the Council for information, and to call upon the Council to instruct the Working Party:
to continue work on the patent litigation system on the basis of document 14492/07, with a view to resolving the remaining outstanding issues and
to resume work on the Community patent as soon as possible, with a view to making equally rapid progress also on that dossier.
The latter sounds interesting: The common mentioning of a future patent litigation system, on the one hand, and resume of work on the Community patent, on the other hand, surely is not accidential. I have got other indications that the EU Presidency as well as the EU Commission really do believe that there might be a small and final time window in the second half of 2008 (French EU Presidency!) for striking some sort of a political deal concerning the EU Community patent. This document seems to support such thinking so far.
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
Document 14912/07 addressed to the 
Patents
