Experts call EU patent system too expensive, less efficient than US

The public meeting on intellectual property rights, held by the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (JURI), was arranged in order to help JURI debate issues of counterfeiting and the Community patent system.

Experts from the academic, industrial and professional worlds agreed on the general principle that patents are effective instruments to protect intellectual property rights but criticised the existing European patent system for lacking legal certainty.

Klaus-Dieter Langfinger, from UNICE, the European employers' association, stressed the correlation between protection of IP rights and economic growth.

Quoting a study by the World Economic Forum, he said that the 20 countries with the highest IP protection standards are among the 27 richest states in the world. He added that many SMEs also benefit from patent protection.

Nevertheless, Langfinger criticised the European patenting system as less efficient than its Japanese and US counterparts.

“The EU does not provide enough legal certainty and affordable costs,” he said. “The aim of making the EU economy more competitive should lead to the removal of those barriers".

Luis Berenguer, former MEP and President of the Tribunal for Competition of Spain, warned that, without reform, patents could become "a rather protectionist instrument serving the interests of big companies". The main problem, he said, is the time and money involved in challenging a patent.

The meeting also heard that in practical terms, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford the cost of obtaining and defending a patent and therefore have no access to the innovation market, leaving bigger firms with a monopoly.

A patent delivered by the European Patent Office or national offices can cost up to €100,000, twice as much as in Japan and three times as much as in the US.

Finally, the meeting discussed the use of criminal law in enforcing intellectual property rights.

According to Reto Hilty, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property in Munich, new EU initiatives in this field were unnecessary.

"International agreements, such as TRIPS, already contain provisions against trade mark and copyright pirating which are binding on the Member States and the EU," he said.

Jim Murray, of the European Consumers' Organisation (BEUC), warned that current practices of fighting counterfeiting could pose a threat to consumers' rights.

For instance, he said, the music industry is imposing levies on its products to compensate the effects of piracy without informing buyers of their right to make a copy for personal use. He therefore called for a distinction between pirating and small-scale copying with no commercial intent.

Mr Murray also questioned the effectiveness of using criminal law measures to enforce IP rights.

“There is a tendency to criminalise people, which has the effect of reducing respect for the law, especially among young people," he warned. "We ask the EP to adopt a balanced approach on IP enforcement and to tell consumers what they can do and not only what they cannot do."

The European Commission has just withdrawn, for technical reasons, a proposal on criminal sanctions for the enforcement of IP and will probably present a new text on the same issue soon.