Euro Parliament readies for final community patent vote

The European Parliament is expected to vote this week on proposals for a community patent, following delays to rewrite certain amendments.

The debate has been re-scheduled for April 9 after it was pulled from Parliament's March 11 agenda because of disagreements over the wording of some of the changes made by the Legal Affairs Committee to the European Commission's original proposals.

Ana Palacio Vallelersundi MEP, rapporteur of the Committee's community patent report, is now urging Parliament to back the Commission proposals for a regulation to create a community patent, together with the Committee's amendments.

The Committee considers a community patent essential to eliminate distortions of competition cause by national protection rights, ensuring the free movement of goods protected by patents.

However, controversy over the issue has meant that the Council of Ministers has not yet been able to reach the unanimous agreement required to adopt the draft regulation. Issues of language, the judicial system and the role of national patent offices in relation to the European Patent Office (EPO), have cause the progress of an EU-wide patent to falter.

The Legal Affairs Committee's final recommendations to Parliament include endorsing Vallelersundi's recommendations that the language regime should follow the community trade mark regulation, under which applications may be submitted in any of the EU's official languages.

In addition, the Committee is suggesting that applicants would have to choose a second language from a choice of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish, for any proceedings such as opposition, revocation or invalidity.

The Committee is also calling for a number of changes to the Commission's proposal for a new community intellectual property court to have jurisdiction at both first and second instance.

Proposed amendments by the group of MEPs would mean establishing first instance jurisdiction at a national level, using national courts with experience in patent litigation as community patent courts, with rulings at second instance being given by the European Chamber for Intellectual Property.

The Committee is also asking for both the Commission and the Council to ensure national patent offices will continue to play an important role in the processing of the community patent.

The Committee wants the EPO to be able to instruct the national offices to produce research reports on a limited number of patent applications, provided they meet certain criteria under a system of quality control that MEPs say should be put in place under the combined authority of the Commission and the EPO.

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