An end to a persistent patent problem?

While it prefers consensus, Belgium is determined in one way or another to give business a boost through a deal on an EU-wide patent.

The Belgian government is determined to use its presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers to bring the Union’s 35-year quest to create a Europe-wide patent to a successful conclusion.

Vincent Van Quickenborne, Belgium’s minister for the economy, has described the patent, as “the pièce de résistance of our presidency”, saying that “it is important…for our companies to create a simpler and cheaper patent system”.

Agreement on a patent would end debate on an issue that ministers first discussed in 1975 and that has been one of the EU’s economic priorities for more than a decade.

Belgium will make the patent the main point of discussion at an informal meeting of industry ministers in September. It wants to broker an agreement at a formal ministerial meeting in December.

Sweden managed to secure an agreement on the most of the principal elements of the patent during its EU presidency in the second half of 2009. Two issues remain.

Outstanding issues

One is the number of number of languages into which patent applications must be translated. To keep the cost of patents down, most member states want to limit the number of mandatory languages to, at most, English, French and German. But Italy and Spain insist that their languages must also be taken into account, to avoid placing their inventors at a competitive disadvantage and to protect their national patent offices from losing business.

Previous attempts to agree the patent have always foundered on the issue of translation. The European Commission will make a proposal today (1 July) on what translation requirements it believes should apply.

The second issue is relatively new: the compatibility of the proposed litigation regime for the patent with the Lisbon treaty. At the member states’ request, that question is currently being addressed by the European Court of Justice. Its opinion, which member states have agreed to respect, is expected by October at the latest.

Enhanced co-operation

A presidency official said that the Commission and the Belgium government are considering whether a coalition of willing member states could adopt the patent if agreement cannot be reached between all 27 member states, using an approach called ‘enhanced co-operation’. But the official added that no decisions had been taken.

It is understood that any push for enhanced co-operation would come a few months into the presidency, if it were felt an agreement between all 27 member states was impossible.

Spain and Italy are expected to put up strong resistance to any push to use enhanced co-operation.

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