Wednesday, December 19, 2012

EU Patent Consolidation

Finally...some good news on the patent front for entrepreneurs after the disaster of the decision to change the U.S to the first-to-file system.

It is about to get a whole lot cheaper and easier to achieve patent protection across the European Union countries.  The EU has approved a simplified system whereby an inventor can receive a single patent that is valid in 25 European countries.  This "unitary patent" is set to become effective in 2014. 

This is particularly good news for small and mid-size businesses with limited resources.  Currently, patents must be translated into the language of each country in which it is issued, which is very expensive.

A single patent court is also to be established, so that patent-holders do not have to defend a patent in each country.

The languages to be used in the new patent are English, French and German.  This decision caused Italy and Spain to refuse to participate, which of course will be their loss.

The following information is provided by the European Patent Office in its news release on the subject:

"The unitary patent will provide legal protection for inventors in 25 EU member states through one single administrative step. It will co-exist with national patents and the classical European patent with which it shares the legal basis and the procedure for grant (as laid out in the European Patent Convention), and from which it differs only in the post-grant phase: Under the unitary patent scheme, the EPO will also be in charge of centrally administering the patent, levying the annual renewal fees and distributing them to the participating EU member states. The fact that unitary patents will be treated as a single patent no longer requiring to be validated (including translation) and administered nationally in each and every state, will lead to massive savings in terms of time and costs."

That's a nice Christmas present for us entrepreneurs!