Brussels, 13/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is to present at the Laeken Summit a compromise proposal seeking to bring the creation of the Community Patent out of the wood. After the failure of the discussions on this subject during the last Internal Market Council (see EUROPE of 28 November, p.6), the Presidency presented a new compromise in order to settle the two main points of divergence, the linguistic regime for the patent and the role of national patents offices. The Presidency proposes that: 1) languages: companies may put in their request for a patent in their own language if they so wish. The patent as a whole will be translated into one of the three languages of the European Patents Office (English, French, German) and may be translated into the applicant's language if the company concerned is prepared to share the cost. The summary of one page of the patent will be translated into all languages by the European Patents Office (EPO) at its own cost. The Member States may refuse this translation. Patent claims, which contain fundamental wording, will be available in one of the three languages of the EPO. If a Member State hopes to translate it into another language, the cost of doing so will be shared between that Member State and the EPO. The aim of this compromise is to obtain the assent of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece which insist on using all the Community languages, and also the majority of States that insist the cost of the Community Patent should be reduced. 2) National offices: All the national patents offices will be responsible for seeking out antecedents. The offices that use the EPO languages will be subject to a quota of 1000 requests and 7,500 searches, per year and per office. On the eve of the Summit, this compromise, that remains close to that presented during the Internal Market Council, did not seem to have the enthusiasm of Member States, especially not the French and British.