Brussels, 01/07/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 1 July, the European Commission adopted a draft regulation setting out the linguistic regime for the new European Union, building on the current language regime of the European Patents Office (EPO), the inter-governmental body responsible for granting European patents and the new EU patent (see EUROPE 10167). Patent applications, containing a description of the invention, must be submitted in one of the three EPO official languages - English, French and German - and include translations of the patent claims in the other two EPO languages. The claims are the section of the patent defining the scope of protection of the invention. No further translation will be required following the official publication of the patent in the language of proceedings. However, in the event of a legal dispute, the patent holder may be required to provide, at his/her own expense, a full translation of the patent in the language of the member state where the infringement took place or in the language of the country of residence of the person committing the infringement. If necessary, he/she may also be required to provide a full translation of the patent, again at his/her own expense, in the language of proceedings of the legal dispute. The Commission also proposes two accompanying measures which are not included in the draft regulation: - inventors, whose language is not one of the three official EPO languages, will be able to file applications in their own language, the costs of translation into English, French or German being fully covered through a reduction in the cost of filing the application; - patent applications will be translated automatically into all the official languages of the EPO by means of high quality machine translations, but these translations will have no legal status.
The Commission says that a European patent validated, for example, in 13 countries costs up to €20,000, with nearly €14,000 being translation costs alone. The proposed system, which is exactly the same as what was put to member states in 2000, would reduce costs by two thirds, down to €6,200, for legal protection throughout the whole of the EU. Only 10% of this figure would be due to translations. By way of comparison, it costs less than €2,000 to take out a patent in the United States.
This legislative proposal, adoption of which must be unanimous, will face opposition from Spain. Madrid has never accepted that the translation into Spanish of a patent translated has no legal value, arguing on the grounds of principles such as non-discrimination between member states. In the course of the first half of this year, European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier, in a nod in the direction of Spanish requests, put a more flexible system to the Spanish government. His efforts met with no success. The Commission, therefore, returned to a more radical solution which will require member states to define their positions. Failure to achieve unanimity could lead some states towards enhanced cooperation (which allows groups of member states fewer than the entire membership of the Union to integrate or co-operate in a particular area within EU structures but without the other members being involved), some commentators have suggested. In December 2009, the Competiveness Council reached agreement on the arrangements for filing an EU patent application and mandated the Commission to bring forward a specific proposal on the language regime applicable. The European Court of Justice was also asked to deliver a legal opinion on the effect of Community law of setting up a European dispute settlement court for the European patent and the future EU patents.
For Commissioner Barnier, the issue before Europe is simple: how can Europe be competitive when the cost of patenting an invention is ten times higher than in the United States? “This acts as a disincentive to innovation, particularly for SMEs” which do not have the money to file a patent, he told press on Thursday 1 July. On average, €14,000 of the €20,000 it costs to file a patent in the EU are spent on translation and validation, Barnier said. He argued that the Commission proposal delivered a balance between multi-lingualism and unilingualism. (M.B./transl.rt)