A planned redesign of the European patent system, announced last week (December 4th), could reduce the cost and strengthen the legal weight of European patents -- a change that biotechnology companies have long awaited.

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Currently, a European patent can cost companies up to 11 times as much as they would pay in the United States, while providing far fewer legal certainties. The existing patent system is simply a bundle of 4-6 national patents; applicants must choose the countries in which they most want their patent to apply, rather than receiving a patent that extends to all of the EU member nations, explained Ilias Konteas, a legal advisor to BusinessEurope, a group that represents EU companies.

The bundled system "raises questions of legal certainty," said Konteas, because "you can have [contested] patents enforced by one country and not another." The new proposal would create a single patent covering all EU member nations. It also stipulates creating a European patent court which would consider challenges to any patent under a single law.

While the proposal appears to have the backing of the member states, said Willy De Greef, the Secretary General of EuropaBio, a trade organization for European biotechnology companies, it will need to undergo an official review by the European Council and the European Parliament before being passed into law.

After nearly a decade of deliberations among the EU members, the proposal is a major step forward, said De Greef.

"The last time [the patent proposal] was getting close to agreement, it stumbled over the language issue," De Greef said. While most of the member states could agree on the need for a unified court system, the group couldn't settle on which language or languages the patent documents should be written in, he said. With 21 languages in the EU, the issue "is so much connected to culture and history," he said "that we have to tread very carefully."

As it stands now, the current proposal leaves the language question open. But the agreement over establishing a European court "revives our confidence that [the EU] means what it says about the innovation agenda," said De Greef. "We are enthusiastically behind it."


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