Brussels, 01/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - The sustained efforts of the Swedish Presidency have had results: the ministers meeting in Internal Market Council on Thursdy 31 May managed to reach agreement on the guidelines that should allow them to continue their work on the thorny matter of a Community patent. We recall that this issue was blocked because of Spain's position (supported by Portugal, Italy and Greece). Spain hopes the national patents offices may continue to play a key role thanks to the fact that a decentralised procedure for granting patents would be maintained together with the Community procedure. Another problem raised by Spain is that of the use of languages. The Commission proposal provides for patents to be issued in English, Germany and French. This is challenged by Madrid despite the fact that, for nearly 30 years, these are the three languages that have been used for the procedure of the European Patents Office. The designation of relevant jurisdiction to ensure respect of intellectual property rights and the setting in place of an accelerated procedure for utility models are so many additional stumbling blocks. It remains to be seen whether the compromise reached by the Council will allow the issue to be brought out of deadlock. It is only a matter of agreeing on guidelines to be followed for continuation of the work, which is supposed to result before the end of the year, and not of an agreement on the Community patent. Furthermore, the terms of the compromise remain vague concerning the linguistic regime to be applied, and it is known that Spain, whose patents office receives many requests from Latin America, hopes to see Spanish rise to the rank of "technology language".
The guidelines finalised by the Council recognise the "central role to be played by the Munich-based European Patent Office (EPO) in the granting and administration of Community patents, whilst recognising that national patent offices should also have an important role. This role for national patent offices would include advising potential applicants for Community Patents, receiving applications and forwarding them to the EPO and disseminating information about Community Patents. National patent offices would also be able to carry out activities in their respective working languages, such as searches related to Community Patent applications, as long as they meet agreed requirements". The question of the nature of the activities and of a possible quantitative limit on the activities will still have to be further considered. Applicants would remain free to have their Community Patent applications fully processed by the EPO.
The guidelines also recognise the need to keep costs of the Community patent at a competitive level and provide for a certain percentage of annual income from the patents to be distributed among the national offices according to an equitable breakdown. On jurisdictional arrangements, the system chosen should be conform to the Articles 225 and 229 of the EC Treaty as amended in Nice. The question of the first instance judicial panel should be arranged with account taken of the need for uniform application of Community law and factors such as cost effectiveness, demand and local languages, closeness to users, etc. Appeals would be heard by the EC's Court of First Instance. On the controversial question of languages, the compromise provides for application of the principle of non-discrimination.
The Council also agreed to mandate the Swedish Presidency to take the necessary procedural steps to request the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation to put on the agenda of its next meeting (25-29 June 2001) the convening of a Diplomatic Conference for the revision of the 1973 European Patent Convention (EPC) with a view to adapting it to the Community Patent.
Finally, Spain called on the Commission to rapidly organise consultations with the European industry to assess the impact that the creation of a model of utility could have. The utility models, the "poorman's patents" are essentially used by SMEs to obtain legal recognition of small inventions or parts of future inventions.