Brussels, 13/04/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 13 April, the European Commission adopted two legislative proposals under an enhanced cooperation regime, which would bring about an 80% reduction in the cost of patents in Europe. Any company or individual would be able to protect their inventions using a single European patent, valid in 25 member states. The two legislative proposals lay down the terms and conditions to obtain protection using the single patent, its legal effects and translation regime. They will be put to the Council and the European Parliament for examination.
The Commission hopes that Spain and Italy, which are not yet included in the participating countries, will take part in this enhanced cooperation. Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the single market, pointed out that as long as these two governments are not in on this action, Spanish and Italian businesses “will not have the right to use this European patent. As well as the use of the three historical languages of the Patent Office, we have provided for the possibility of translation into all languages, including Spanish and Italian.”
The measures proposed by the Commission are as follows: - holders of European patent will be able to ask the EPO (European Patent Office) for unitary patent protection for the territory of the 25 member states. This patent will guarantee their inventions the same level of protection in all these 25 countries; - patent applications can be submitted in any language, but in line with the procedure currently in force, the EPO will continue to examine applications and issue patent in English, French or German (which are its three official languages). Applicants residing in the EU and submitting their patent request in a language other than the three languages of the EPO will receive compensation for their translation costs into one of these languages. Lastly, further to the issuance of the patent, the patent claims, defining the scope of protection, must be translated into the other two languages of the EPO; - for a minimum transition period of 12 years, unitary European patents issued in French or German must be translated into English. Those issued in English must be translated into another official language of the EU. These translations will be obligatory until a high-quality machine translation system is available, guaranteeing the accessibility of information on patents. Additional translations provided during the transition period will be used directly to develop a high-quality machine translation system. (L.C./transl.fl)
With the number of patent applications up 11% compared to 2009, the EPO received 235,000 European patent applications in 2010, 39% of which came from the 38 states of the members of the EPO, the European Patent Office (the member states of the EU +11 other European countries), 26% from the United States, 18% from Japan and 5% each from China and South Korea.
After a drop of around 6% in 2009, the total number of applications in 2010 more than outstripped 2008 levels, itself a record year, indicating that growth is in recovery, commented Benoît Battistelli, the president of the Office. However, this overall increase hides sharp disparities between centres of activity, businesses and, most of all, regions; some of these have not yet got back to 2008 levels (US, EPO states and member states of the EU in particular).
Taken by region, the increase comes mainly from considerable growth in the United States (60,588 applications, +12%), Japan (41,917, +10%), but most of all in China (12,698, +54%) and Korea (12,342, +21%). With a total of 92,553 applications in 2010, the increase on 2009 figures, on the other hand, is still just 6% for all 38 member countries of the EPO (see above) and, among these, 5% for the member states of the EU (82,828 applications). Of these, Germany takes the lion's share (33,139 applications, 14% of the total, +8.5% compared to 2009), followed by France (11,692, 5%, +2%). The Netherlands, on the other hand, saw a 10% drop in patent applications in 2010, following a decrease of 15% in 2009.
Taken by sector of activity, there has been something of a boom in biotechnologies and the pharmaceutical industry, where patent applications were up by 42.6% (33.2% in 2009) and 20% respectively, followed by telecommunications, with an increase of 11.2% (25% in 2009).
Taken by businesses, it is worth noting a good performance by European businesses, which take the top three global places for numbers of patents presented (Siemens, Philips, BASF), and five of which make it to the top 10. (LC./F.G./transl.fl)