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Leader 1st October 2010
Moves to develop a single EU-wide patent system began in 2003 but progress has been hampered by repeated linguistic, technical and legal difficulties.
The cost of filing and protecting patents in Europe is substantially higher than in the US and Japan, and businesses have consistently complained about the fragmented and inconsistent decisions handed down by European courts.
Companies often have to fight legal actions in several European countries at once and national courts regularly come to conflicting conclusions on identical cases. A single patent court will make litigation cheaper and more predictable.
In July, the Commission presented a proposal to end the deadlock on linguistic disputes.
The commissioner in charge of the dossier, Michel Barnier, proposed to maintain English, French and German as official languages for an EU patent, which means that everything would no longer need to be translated into all official EU languages.
Under this proposal, applicants would be able to file a patent in their own language, but would have to have it translated into one of the three official languages - the costs for which would be eligible for reimbursement.
But this has not gone down well with some members of the Community...
Spain and Italy in particular have criticised the proposals, advocating either a multilingual scheme, or a monolingual regime where English would be the only official language.
Yesterday, at an unofficial meeting, the Belgian EU Presidency tried to break the deadlock by tabling a new set of proposals for discussion. These largely echo those put forward by Michel Barnier but try to appease Spain and Italy by conceding that English would be the only language into which patents are translated.
However, this would only be for a transitional period until the performances of translation machines have reached an acceptable level and once this has happened, patents would be translated into all EU languages from the three recognised official languages! Moreover, this translation would be for information purposes only and would have no legal effect!
These new proposals leave untouched the privileges Michel Barnier granted to France and Germany, which allow French and German applicants to file patents in their own languages, while other Europeans would need to translate their applications into English, French or German. They do not advocate a move towards a permanent monolingual regime.
Two weeks ago, Spain presented an alternative plan which differed from Michel Barnier's and went further than the Belgian compromise text.
Madrid supported the idea of a semi-monolingual regime based on English as the only official language into which patents have to be translated. Under this proposal, applicants could also choose to file their patents in a second EU official language. The privileged status of French and German would therefore fade away.
Paris and Berlin oppose this idea and stress that the current system managed by the European Patent Office is in fact based on English, French and German as official languages.
They also use the arguments that the EPO is based in Munich and that Germany is also by far the leading country in the EU in terms of number of patents filed (in 2009, 18.7% of total EPO patent applications came from Germany, according to EPO figures. France is second, with a share of 6.6%, followed by the Netherlands, the UK and Italy).
To quote EurActive: "The battle for the linguistic regime of the EU patent system is a genuine political conflict where national standings are at stake. At the same time, the absence of a deal on the matter would condemn Europe to keep lagging behind at global level on the number of patents filed, losing its competitiveness to emerging powers like China."
I couldn't agree more.
This argument has been running since 2003 and I shudder to think how much of our hard-earned money has been spent on it by way of taxes and how much more money is likely to be wasted if anything other than the permanent monolingual regime - which would see English used - is adopted.
I used to be fluent in both French and German and could speak a little Spanish but have sadly lost these skills because everybody speaks English. And being English, I, like my counterparts, have not been brought up to insist that we use a different language from our own when whoever we are speaking to wants to practice their language skills on us. As a result, the majority of us 'Brits' have lost the ability to speak a foreign language.
And how many of us, shopping in Europe, have real trouble finding the information we need on a small item, be it food, cosmetics or washing powder, because it has been translated into so many European languages that the typeface has had to be reduced to such a small size that it has actually become illegible?
Let's have some common sense here please - and just to prove I've not lost everything...
Y Viva España!
John Austen writes:
"Interesting read. As one of the most inventive nations on earth (a Japanese survey showed that more than 50% of all inventions originated in these islands) perhaps the reason why we appear to lag behind in patent applications now is that it is pointless. Copycat products with a tweak here and there seem to get around the rules.
Anyway, the obvious thing to me is: file in your own language, whatever that may be, plus English, the global language for business and commerce.
Job done.
How much did they spend on looking at this? It rather sums up the huge waste of resources that the EU swallows up every year, if I can do it in one minute."
If you have a comment to make on this subject, we'd love to receive it - whichever part of the world you're from...
1st October 2010