The European Union will have a Community patent within five years, the vice-president of the European Commission, who is in charge of enterprise and industry, told reporters last week.
"I am more optimistic about it than I was last year," Guenter Verheugen said. "Especially if the London Agreement enters into force – that's a very important first step."
Speaking at a Patent Forum in Munich organized by the EPO, Verheugen described the Community patent as "indispensable" for European companies.
"When it comes to IP, a lot of companies, especially SMEs, cannot afford to protect themselves. The normal European company isn't Bosch, the average company is an SME which has fewer than 10 employees. They have a relatively low turnover so the cost of protecting their IP is a central consideration."
And he criticized the prohibitively expensive system of patent translations in Europe.
"If any politician is bold enough to tell me that's OK, then they should do so. This really has to stop. Those that stand in the way [of reform] are not only damaging Europe but are also damaging themselves."
The Commission wants to cut the costs of obtaining and maintaining IP protection in Europe by limiting the languages used in patent applications to English, French and German, introducing a centralized patent litigation system and establishing an EU-wide Community patent to replace the system of national patents now in force. But the Commission faces opposition to some of its proposals from a number of national governments in the EU.
Earlier this month the Commission published a blueprint for an EU-wide patent strategy. But following an increasingly polarized debate between those member states that backed the European Patent Litigation Agreement and those that backed a proposal championed by the French to create a Community court for European patents, the Commission has been obliged to propose a compromise solution that attempts to combine both elements. It also tries to kickstart efforts to introduce a Community patent.
"I urge member states to reconsider their position to allow us to move forward," Verheugen said.
His comments echoed those of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who told the Patent Forum that the costs of translating patents must be cut and that "our common goal must be to make procedures simpler, affordable and secure in law". She said that Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency until July, aims to push forward with efforts to achieve a standardized jurisdiction for patent-related cases.
But some IP owners at the Forum were less optimistic about the timetable for achieving a Community patent than commissioner Verheugen, as well as being less convinced if its usefulness.
"It's irrelevant," one IP counsel told MIP Week. "In many industries if you have a patent in one country – say Germany – then you don't need one elsewhere. No one would think of launching a car or a telecoms service if they couldn't sell it in Germany. The European single market has helped a lot. The Commission should be proud of what they have done to create that."
