The bill to ratify the Agreement was presented to the Assemblée Nationale on August 24 and will be debated this month.
The London Agreement on the application of Article 65 of the European Patent Convention was signed in October 2000. Countries that sign it agree to waive the requirement for translations of European patents to be filed in their national language.
In practice, therefore, applicants will not have to translate the specification of their patents for London Agreement contracting states which have one of the three EPO languages (English, French and German) as an official language or which have prescribed one of those three languages for the purposes of the Agreement.
To enter into force, the Agreement must be ratified by eight states, including the UK, France and Germany.
To date nine states have ratified it: Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and the UK. Denmark and Sweden have also approved it and are ready to ratify.
It is estimated that translation costs will be reduced by an average of 45% once the Agreement comes into effect.
Signatory states can still require the translation of patent claims into their national languages.
Ratification by France has long been seen as the biggest obstacle to the Agreement coming into force, as there was strong resistance from patent practitioners and politicians.
But former EPO president Alain Pompidou campaigned for ratification in France, and new president Nicolas Sarkozy has proved more enthusiastic than his predecessor Jacques Chirac.
Last year France’s Constitutional Council cleared the way for the country to adopt the Agreement when it ruled on September 28 that its implementation would not contravene the country’s Constitution.
