Brussels, 03/03/2003 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the Competitiveness Council reached a compromise on the future Community patent to be endorsed by the European Council on 21 March. The Commission is expected to present an amended proposal of regulation in order to integrate the Council's guidelines in the context of a procedure defined by Articles 3008, 225a and 229 of the Treaty (Council unanimity, EP consultation).
The common approach defined by the Council provides that, until 2010, the national courts will continue to be competent for disputes concerning future Community patents. After this, the jurisdictional system will be fully centralised. Disputes and appeals will then be dealt with by a specialised Court established at the Court of First Instance of the European Court of Justice, according to the new modalities set out in the Nice Treaty. This solution is a compromise between the majority of Member States which, with the Commission, urged for centralised jurisdiction, and Germany, which insisted on the specialised Chambers remaining competent. Berlin called for a 10-year period of transition, while the Presidency proposed five years. The Commission originally proposed that the system should be centralised during the first few years in order to develop a harmonised case law. German Secretary of State for Justice Hansjörg Geiger expressed satisfaction stressing that the German courts could put their experience to the service of the Court of Justice, while pursuing their activities until 2010. He stressed that, at present, 70% of legal disputes concerning patents are dealt with by the German courts.
According to the compromise already defined in November 2002 regarding the linguistic regime, claims forming the core of the patent should be deposited in one of the three official languages of the European Patents Office (English, German or French), which will constitute the working language, and translated at the cost of the Office into two other languages (Italian or Spanish). Once the patent is issued, these claims should be translated into all Community languages.
According to the compromise, the European Patents Office will be responsible for examining patent requests and for issuing patents, but the national patents offices may continue to play a role, carrying out research at the request of depositors and on behalf of the European Office.
Fees for attributing patents should be shared equally two ways between the European Patents Office and the national offices, according to criteria still to be defined.
A review clause provides for the Commission to present, five years after the first request for a patent, a report on implementation of the system, mainly covering the jurisdiction, the languages and the sharing of fees.
We recall that the Commission had presented its proposal in 2000 and that the first attempt at creating a Community patent dates back to 1975. According to assessments made last year by the Commission, the cost of a Community patent in all the languages of an enlarged Europe would be EUR 23,805 (on the basis of translation costs of 85 euros per page).