Strasbourg, 10/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - By 255 to 125 with 122 abstentions, the European Parliament approved the report by Ana Palacio Vallelersundi (EPP, Spain) on the draft regulation on the Community Patent, along with amendments tabled by the Legal and Internal Market Committee. The EP is only being consulted on this issue. It emphasised that national patent offices should be involved, suggesting they could carry out some of the procedural work involved in the Community Patent for the European Patent Office (EPO), such as investigations into innovation, as long as they respect the quality standards that were agreed. Responsibility for awarding the Community Patent would remain solely in the EPO's hands. The EP also wanted financial compensation to be foreseen for work carried out by national patent offices. Other amendments mainly covered the legal system with the EP calling for one or two Community Patent Tribunals to be created in every Member States which would have powers to settle patent disputes and act as courts of first instance with the option of appealing to the European Intellectual Property Chamber (still to be set up, included in the Nice Treaty - the Commission is proposing that the new Chamber have sole jurisdiction). The EP also strengthened the measure that stipulates that the Community Patent mustn't prevent experimental use of the object that has been patented. On the sensitive issue of languages (one of the main sticking points at Council level) the EP proposed that Council and Commission ensure at the next diplomatic conference on the review of the Convention on the Community Patent that the language scheme governing the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market in Alicante be extended to the Community Patent. The Alicante office's scheme involves the person submitting the patent request being able to lodge the request in English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.
In the debate, Commissioner Frits Bolkestein hailed the report that arrived in good time since the Council was in the process of discussing the issue and welcomed the EP's clarifications on strengthening the "Bolar" type measures (particularly useful for manufacturers of general medicine). On the role of national offices, he said that various conditions had to be met for being involved in the Community Patent system such as the signature of a partnership agreement with the EPO; involvement would concern preliminary prior research; and patent requestors would still have the option of sending requests directly to the EP. The Commissioner stressed, however, that the involvement of national offices would be subject to negotiations with the EPO that would also cover the breakdown of revenue accruing from the Community Patent, even though the Commission accepts the idea in theory. He called for the centralised nature of the legal system to be maintained and said that the EPO's language system worked very well. Recognising that some aspects of the amendments tabled by Liberal, Green and Regionalist MEPs merited detailed examination, Mr Bolkestein said it should be possible to have a system whereby a first request could be lodged in a national language of the country in question with a charge for translation, but he opposed requests for the Community to be translated into all EU languages. The cost, he said, of such a measure (for 15 Member States) was EUR 17,000, but this would rise to EUR 31,500 after enlargement to 19 languages (not counting Malta) which would be prohibitive and make the Patent completely pointless. The Commission didn't oppose partial translations where useful, he said.