Patents protect inventions for up to 20 years. The great drawback of the current patent system is the cost of obtaining a patent in the first place and then enforcing it if it is infringed. One major reason is that patent protection is obtained on a country-by-country basis, resulting in duplication of costs and professional advice and different objections being raised by different patent examiners in different countries. As for enforcement, patents can be and frequently are interpreted differently by the courts of each country.
In Europe, currently, patents can be obtained either on a country-by-country basis or by using the European Patent System (EPS) which allows a unitary administrative application leading to a bundle of separate, national patents. Whichever route is used, the patents have still to be enforced in the courts of each country.
The upshot has been that whilst the EPS has significantly reduced the cost of making multiple national patent applications, an average patent covering 8 countries kept in force for 10 years will cost £20,000 i.e. some 5 times more than the equivalent cost of a US or Japanese patent, with no less than 40% of this expense resulting from translation costs.
The new Community Patent would cover the EU’s 15 member states. One patent application, which sets out the full details, would be filed in either English, German or French. This would be accompanied by a description of what the inventor claims the patent covers in each of the three languages. The granted patent would be enforced in a new, central patent court (“the Community Intellectual Property Court”) within the European Court of Justice which would have exclusive jurisdiction over questions of validity and infringement. Arguments over ownership and licensing would remain with the national courts.
The Economic and Social Committee has suggested that the Commission should structure the new patent system so that applications can be accepted in any EU language and that they should then be translated into English, French or German, but without additional cost to the inventor.