Brussels, 30/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission announced on Wednesday 30 September that Italy had officially joined the enhanced cooperation on unitary patent protection.
“This is a major breakthrough as Italy is the fourth biggest market in Europe in terms of patent validation”, said the Commission, and it went on to state that this decision will make the unitary patent “even more attractive for companies and inventors”.
Italy, alongside Spain, had been one of the dissident voices on the European patent project provided for by Regulations No 1257/2012 and No 1260/2012. Its unhappiness was over the planned linguistic regime, the unitary patent being translated into three languages only (English, French and German) in order to keep application costs down and speed up procedures. Spain, indeed, referred the matter to the Court of Justice of the EU but lost its case in May (see EUROPE 11308). Since then, compromise has been reached and a system, of automatic translation will be put in place. These automatic translations will not, however, have any legal value, a European source says.
At the Competitiveness Council on 1 October (see EUROPE 11398), the Commission will update ministers on implementation of unitary patent protection. A signing ceremony for the protocol establishing a unified patent court will also take place.
At present, eight member states have ratified the protocol: Austria, France, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Malta, Luxembourg and Portugal. The unitary patent legislative package will only come into effect once 13 member states, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, have signed the agreement of 19 February 2013. “Three countries will definitely not have signed the protocol tomorrow - Croatia, Poland and Spain. And there remains a doubt over the United Kingdom, too”, indicated a source close to the matter. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)