Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MYK]

See the link for the rest of the article.
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14105584&source=hptextfeature

Europe's unwieldy patent regime
Smother of invention
Jul 23rd 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

European companies are suffering from an ineffective patent system

IN 1997 the European Patent Office (EPO) gave a patent to Massachusetts General Hospital for its use of nitric oxide to treat bronchoconstriction, a method often used for “blue baby” syndrome. Three gas companies—America’s Air Products, France’s Air Liquide and Germany’s Westfalen Gas—appealed against the grant of the patent. Mass General and its Swedish licensee, AGA, then launched actions for infringement in the Netherlands, France and Germany. In 2000 a Dutch court said the patent was partially valid, in 2003 a French court said its validity was questionable and in the same year a German court judged it valid. Then in 2004 the EPO revoked the patent entirely.

...

[bartmans]

So what's new?
This situation has been recognized since the start of the Eurpean (pre-grant) patent system. Unfortyunately, the European Commission, despite several attempts, has been unable to finish the harmonisation of European patent law by instituting a Community patent. Most of the reasons why this has not worked out so far are of a political nature and fed by national(istic) interests of the member states. This is mostly apparent in the debate on the language regime for such a community patent, but also the (fear of) loss of work at the national patent organisations is an important breaking factor in the discussions.
An initiative from the European Patent Office (which, for clarity, is not a part of the European union, but a separate and independent organisation) together with European patent judges from the main patent jurisdictions, has led to a draft European patent litigation protocol, of which the final drafting was done some 5 years ago. However, this was firmly critisized by the european Commission while this would create a separate supranational court system which is not allowed under the European Treaty.

Luckily, since a few years, these two systems seem to have merged into new proposals from the European Commission. In the same time also the London protocol has been enacted which seems to be a frontportal for ending the controversy on languages. And, of course, there still is a strong lobby from industry to come to a final solution.

Nevertheless, politics seem to be unpredicatble, and of course the economic crisis (and probably several other matters) has a higher pRiority on the political agenda. Still there is progress, albeit slow, behind the curtains.
For people who are interested in regular updates on the issue, I receommend following the blog of Axel Horns http://www.ipjur.com/blog2/, who mostly is the first to report on movements within the legislative process within the European Union.

[UVAgal4]

I agree.  However, I think it is trying to move towards a more unified system, especially for patent infringement cases.
But just imagine if there was one patent for all of north america, or one patent for all of asia, etc.
It is hard to get many different national offices to swallow their pride and work together!

[MYK]

But just imagine if there was one patent for all of north america

Isn't there??  Or are you including Greenland as part of America?