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Single EU patent? Don’t hold your breath

Date: 26/07/2010

The European Commission has recently published a proposal for an EU-wide patent - one that doesn’t need to be expensively translated into umpteen European languages. Great news for inventors on the face of it. But any celebration may be a little premature.   

The basic idea is to publish patents only in English, French or German, with further translations required only if there is a legal dispute. (But who would pay for them then? No clear answer...) Anyway, two guarded cheers at least, one would think. Bring it on.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new idea. It’s been kicking around for three decades, unadopted because of one big stumbling block - the need for the agreement of all member states. Which hasn’t happened so far, and is reported to be still a long shot now, even though there is general agreement that translation makes patenting in Europe far too expensive and complicated.

Spain and Italy are particularly obstinate, apparently, and other objecting states may not be far behind them.

The proposal may in fact be little more than a piece of spin to big up Belgium, which has just taken over the EU presidency and wants to prioritise a single EU patent during its six-month tenure. Good on the Belgians if they beat the odds and deliver a single EU patent. I shall buy a hat and eat it. But Europe being Europe, their chances of success must be slim.

So for the forseeable future it continues to cost €20,000 to get patent protection in 13 EU member states (half of the total), while the same patent in the USA typically costs less than €2,000.

My thanks to Richard Brosch and Andras Szucs of Birmingham Inventors Club for feeding me information about the proposal.  

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