Moves to develop a single patent system for the EU began back in 2003, but progress has been hampered mainly by language issues. An EU patent would cut both costs and the risk of forgery, protect inventions of EU origin, centralise disputes to one single jurisdiction and create a level playing field for Europe’s innovative businesses.

Currently, the European Patent Office (EPO) handles requests for European patents in individual member countries, but the procedure involves several translations and different judicial systems. This results in European companies often spending 10 times more on patents than their American and Japanese rivals, putting them at a significant disadvantage.

The extraordinary Competitiveness Council, which met in Luxembourg on 27 June 2011, put together the broad outlines of the future EU patent. The 27 ministers agreed a general approach on the two draft regulations submitted by the European Commission implementing enhanced cooperation in this area by 25 Member States—excluding Italy and Spain. The proposals concern the characteristics of and arrangements for issuing the future patent that confers identical protection in the participating Member States, and translation provisions.

The proposals recognise English, French and German as the patent’s official filing languages but Italy and Spain fear that this would give an unfair advantage to companies from the ‘big three’ jurisdictions. The countries also feel that the move to go ahead without the approval of all 27 Member States goes against the spirit of the single market.

It seems that the action by Italy and Spain will not slow things down, however, Italian Member of the European Parliament Mr Raffaele Baldassarre told Euractiv, ‘there are no conditions in place enabling the enhanced co-operation to be blocked whilst the legal action is pending’. Meanwhile, the EPO has already signed an agreement with US Internet giant Google back in March 2011 to collaborate on technology to offer translation of patents on its website into 28 European languages, as well as into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.

What is next?

The ball is now in the European Parliament’s court. It will be reviewing the text in November. The forthcoming Polish EU Presidency has made this issue a priority and hopes to conclude an agreement between the Council and Members of the European Parliament at the December Competitiveness Council.

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