Europe tries again as Commission questions community patent
Just days after European industry threatened to withdraw its support for the proposed community patent, the project received another blow when the Commission suggested dropping it altogether Sunday, 24-Nov-02 00:00:00 GMTNews11540
Just days after European industry threatened to withdraw its support for the proposed
community patent, the project received another blow when the Commission suggested dropping it
altogether.
Frustrated by member states' failure to agree a compromise blueprint for the patent,
internal market commissioner Fritz Bolkestein issued a stark warning to Europe's quarrelling
governments, who are due to discuss the proposals again this week.
"Europe's companies are crying out for access to pan-European patent protection at
reasonable cost with minimum red-tape and maximum legal certainty," said Bolkestein. "The
failure to agree on the Community Patent undermines the credibility of the whole enterprise to
make Europe the most competitive economy in the world by 2010."
Bolkestein warned Council ministers that the Commission would not accept "watered down"
proposals for the community patent.
Companies using the community patent should not have to run the risk of potential legal
action before courts in every member state and be vulnerable to variant interpretations of
jurisprudence, said Bolkestein.
"We cannot allow such a vital measure to be sacrificed on the altar of petty national
interests," news agencies in Brussels reported Bolkestein as saying. "I will not agree to a
community patent that would be a white elephant."
Bokestein's comments came a week after member state ministers failed again to agree on
proposals outlining the jurisdictional framework under which the patent would operate.
A small number of countries, led by Germany, were not happy with proposals for a centralized
patent court, preferring instead a number of decentralized, regional courts.
But member state ministers will have another chance to reach an agreement on Tuesday when
the Competitive Council meets again to discuss the proposals. The Commission is hoping that
progress can be made.
Referring to this week's meeting, the Commission said in a statement: "The Commission
considers that the focus of the Council's attention should rather be on resolving the major
outstanding difficulty concerning the proposals, namely the establishment of a system of
Community courts to rule on patent disputes, rather than further procedural conclusions."
Bolkestein's criticisms signal worrying times for supporters of the community patent, coming
soon after Europe's leading industry group said that if the system was not in place soon it
would look at working within the existing patent system. Jerome Chauvin, director of company
affairs for the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe (UNICE) told MIP
Week that disagreements over the cost, language and jurisdiction of the patent had stalled
progress so much that European companies may look to other ways of establishing a Europe-wide
IP system.
With threats from industry and law makers to abandon the proposals, the pressure is now
firmly on European governments to reach a compromise solution.
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