31/05/2011 (Agence Europe) - Patent. In a press release explaining why it was lodging an appeal with the EU General Court against the Council decision of 10 March authorising enhanced cooperation on the European patent (see EUROPE 10389), the Italian government says that this is setting “an unhelpful precedent in the process of European integration”, arguing that “enhanced cooperation was not envisaged as an instrument of division, defeating the norms of the treaties which require unanimity, but as way of allowing groups of states to undertake developments of the European integration process in which other states are not interested”. It states that this enhanced cooperation in the area of the patent runs “counter to the spirit of the single market, in that it creates divisions and distortions inside the single market, which, as a consequence, penalise our businesses”. (F.F./transl.rt)