Brussels, 11/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - As expected, the European Parliament gave its green light to the future unitary patent in Strasbourg on Tuesday. The patent should be able to be delivered by January 2014. On Tuesday morning, the advocate general from the Court of Justice in Luxembourg had cleared the way, recommending the rejection of Italy and Spain's appeal against the enhanced cooperation chosen by the other 25 member states (see other article). These two pieces of good news, marked by the prior political agreement of the ministers for competitiveness the previous day, thus enabled European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services Michel Barnier to hail the day as “historic”. Not all criticism was swept aside however - with the Greens/EFA Group, for example, again denouncing on Tuesday morning the role of the European Patent Office as too great, and denouncing the mix of international and Community law. The member states indeed had to opt in favour of an international agreement to establish the future patents court, which will be independent of the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. Nevertheless, according to the latest compromises, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg will have to be consulted by the patents court (divided between Paris, London and Munich) as soon as there is a problem of interpretation with the two Community regulations creating the patent which were approved by the European Parliament on Tuesday - on the linguistic regulation and on the ways of delivering the patent. This is a legal structure that has also aroused the criticism of large international groups, several specialist sites report.
The Nokia group and BAE Systems thus addressed a joint note to MEPs on 10 December, asking them not to adopt this patent package. In the view of Nokia and BAE, the new system will far from favour innovation and will even create a “shopping forum” in which businesses will be able to choose the court that pleases them.
These criticisms were not totally swept aside by the rapporteurs - with Bernhard Rapkay (S&D, Germany), the rapporteur on the creation of the patent, having thus accepted a compromise in November which was not completely “optimal”. However, with the MEPs seeming to want to be done with this once and for all, it is with a clear majority that they adopted the three texts on Tuesday. The Rapkay regulation was approved by 484 votes in favour, 164 votes against and 35 abstentions. The Baldassarre (EPP, Italy) resolution on languages was approved by 481 votes in favour, 152 against and 49 abstentions, and the Lehne (EPP, Germany) report on the future court was approved by 483 votes in favour, 161 against and 38 abstentions. In the opinion of Klaus-Heiner Lehne, the concerns of these companies were heard as well: “We have seen to it to have courts - even premises - that are international”, he said, with “judges who will come from other member states” and other legal cultures, so as to avoid the “shopping forum” (our translation).
“Today's vote is good news for the European economy and especially for European small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)”, Rapkay said. (SP/transl.fl)