Brussels, 03/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The Council has still not reached agreement on the launch of the Community patent (which should have been adopted at the end of last year). The Spanish Presidency put forward a new compromise proposal this week on the sensitive areas - translation costs, the role of national patent offices, charges and legal systems. After taking the proposal apart point by point, the Permanent Representatives finally agreed to continue working on it with the aim of making progress at the 21 May Internal Market Council. The Presidency's hopes of being able to reach agreement are beginning to wear thin.
In its compromise proposal, the Presidency started by pointing out that the Barcelona Summit had called for the Community patent to be a flexible, effective instrument that companies could acquire at an affordable price and that met principles of legal certainty and non-discrimination between Member States while assuring a high level of quality. The Presidency went on to note:
Translation and costs. The Commission feels that translating all the claims into all EU languages is the only viable and realistic compromise solution since other suggestions, like the one rejected during the Belgian Presidency, to translate only part of the claims would be incompatible with the principles of legal certainty and non-discrimination. According to the estimates submitted by the Commission, a patent for which all claims are translated into all EU languages would cost EUR 23,805, of which EUR 5,700 would be translation costs, which the Presidency sees as a "reasonable" figure, compatible with cutting costs in other areas of the procedure. At the Permanent Representatives' meeting this week, the UK, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden opposed this solution. Germany called for the language system used by the Alicante Trademark Office to be retained, whereby trademark requests can be lodged in any EU language with a choice of working language afterwards between English, German, French, Italian and Spanish. Belgium and the Netherlands oppose this solution (which was also put forward by the European Parliament). The Alicante scheme reveals that in practice English is selected for 52% of cases (see EUROPE of 22/23 April, pp 13/14).
Role of national patent offices. Taking up the Swedish and Belgian compromise proposals, the Presidency suggests that 1) the European Patent Office would be responsible for assessing and granting patents; 2) national offices could carry out research; 3) companies could opt for the entire process to be conducted by the European Patent Office.
Sharing of income. Consensus is beginning to form over how the registration costs for renewing patents should be shared out - half for the European Patent Office and half for national patent offices. The Presidency has suggested the amount be divided among Member States in line with four criteria - 1) the number of patents validated by each Member State; 2) the number of patent requests from each Member State; 3) the number of patents granted by each Member State; 4) adjustment according to vote-weighting on the Council. Luxembourg has expressed doubt about the fourth criteria.
Legal system. The Presidency suggests that a central Tribunal of First Instance could be connected to the Court of First Instance in Luxembourg which would also serve as an Appeal Court. In parallel, the creation of an unspecified number of regional courts might be considered. The European Commission pointed out that the legal system would also have to have its own ad hoc language system. Germany is the country that is insisting the most to have local jurisdiction (for the Düsseldorf court) and does not find the Presidency's proposal acceptable since it does not give enough guarantees for the regional courts. Right from the beginning France has been calling for a centralised court on the grounds of legal coherence.