The Polish Presidency is hopeful that a special signing ceremony will take place on 20 December to mark political agreement on the unified EU patent. With the change of governments in Italy and Spain, the only two countries of the EU27 to have objected to the new system which recognises English, French and German as the patent’s official filing languages, there is hope also that they will change their position to one of support.
Decisions regarding the implementation of the new patent regime have still to be taken on
- Where to locate the central patent court, with London and Munich still refusing to cede it to Paris as envisaged by the Polish Presidency;
- The relative powers and financing of all these bodies and the system itself;
- Transition procedures to govern the introduction of the new system.
At the December meeting of the EU Council, competitiveness ministers agreed that Luxembourg would get the appeals court, Slovenia and Portugal the mediation and arbitration centres and Hungary a training facility. After pushing for revisions to the draft regulations to make the system cheaper andd easier for small businesses to use, the European Parliament still needs to approve the deal. If all goes well, the new patent system could be up and running by 2014.
