On Tuesday 27 February, MEPs debated the report by Marion Walsmann (EPP, German) on Standards Essential Patents (SEPs). SEPs protect a technology that is essential for compliance with a certain standard. The Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) adopted the report by a narrow majority: 13 votes in favour and 10 abstentions.
Several members of the EPP, the political group to which the rapporteur belongs, do not support the text adopted. They consider that it will create red tape and that it will not solve the problems encountered by patent holders and users.
Along with other members of Renew Europe, they tabled around forty amendments before the plenary vote on Wednesday 28 February. Among the changes requested is the wish to abolish the procedures for verifying the essentiality of patents, which they believe are unnecessary. These procedures were devised by the European Commission to prevent patent holders from ‘over-declaring’.
“Adding layers of bureaucracy is not going to help businesses”, said the chairman of the JURI committee, Adrián Vázquez Lázara (Renew Europe, Spanish), who co-authored the amendments.
It is also calling for the abolition of the determination of an aggregate royalty for patent holders.
For the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton, this abolition “is not convincing”; it “would deprive a company developing a new product of technological and financial predictability”.
Marion Walsmann stressed the need to change the current rules, which she described as “obsolete and unfair”.
IP Europe is calling on MEPs to reject Ms Walsmann’s report. The text will “will increase costs and administrative burdens to EU innovators, it will cause delays, uncertainties” and overall “it will reduce incentives to invest in standards”.
The amendments tabled, if adopted, would “limit the damage”, according to Patrick McCutcheon, Director of IP Europe, but they leave certain problems unaddressed. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)