Unitary EU patents to be available from 2014 - but will the new Court be ready in time?

The European Parliament has issued a press release stating that agreement has been reached on plans to introduce a unitary EU patent. The original proposal was reported by Withers & Rogers earlier in 2011 and, in substance, has survived the political wrangling mostly unchanged.

The new EU-wide patents (actually, EU minus Italy & Spain for the time being) will be derived from the existing European Patent Office (EPO) granting procedure, and will be available to patent applicants instead of the bundle of national patents currently obtainable in those EU states.

The unitary EU patent will appear in 3 languages; English, French & German. This is expected to cut patenting costs by up to 80% compared with the current European patent system, where translations into many more European languages are typically required. This will significantly boost the competitiveness of the EU. The languages issue had been a stumbling block for European patent integration for many years.

The agreed legal framework now requires approval by the European Parliament, as a whole, and the Council, but it is expected that unitary EU patents will be available from 2014.

The unitary EU patent will be enforced, or revoked, throughout all 25 participating EU member states. The European Parliament is also currently considering a proposal for the setting up of a Unified Patent Court (UPC) to handle these matters but is facing significant headwinds - not least questions over how it will be funded, how costs for litigants will be kept under control... and where the UPC will be located.

The much sought after aim is to reduce costs and provide greater legal certainty compared with the current system, where different national courts can, and occasionally do, rule differently on the same European patents.

The success of the “EU patent package” now depends on whether the UPC can be set up in a way that industry will actually want to use by 2014. Otherwise, patent applicants will probably rather stick with the current European patent system (which will continue to run concurrently) rather than adopt the new unitary EU patent.

One final thought: London is emerging as a global legal centre with the recent opening of the state-of-the-art Rolls Building - what better place for the UPC to be located?

Richard Worthington
Advanced Engineering Group