Following further fruitless discussions between European
countries this week, Charlie McCreevy has warned that the entire
plan could stall. “Anything remotely concerning this patent
area is fraught with minefields at every turn of the road,”
McCreevy told the Financial Times.
Europe's industry ministers met on Monday to discuss how to
establish the long-planned European Patent Litigation Agreement
which would commit its signatory states to an integrated judicial
system for patent disputes, including uniform rules of procedure
and a common appeal court. They discussed long-standing problems
with the proposal and failed to come to any agreement.
France said it wanted any EPLA to be taken out of the hands of
the European Patent Office (EPO) and put into the control of
Europe's existing courts system. Others, too, have questioned the
accountability of an EPLA tied to the EPO and not to the EU
itself.
Belgium reportedly argued that entry into an EPLA agreement
should be voluntary, and that countries should not be forced into
the scheme by European decree.
McCreevy sought permission from the national ministers to
negotiate on all of the EU's behalf for entry into the EPLA scheme.
That was not given.
McCreevy has already amended his EPLA plans this year. The
European Parliament objected to a motion on joining the EPLA on
grounds of accountability, cost and the prospect that it would make
software patents more likely.
Members of the Parliament proposed their own, softened, version
of McCreevy's motion, which they passed in October this year. That
motion said that the Parliament "considers that the proposed [EPLA]
text needs significant improvements, which address concerns about
democratic control, judicial independence and litigation costs, and
a satisfactory proposal for the Rules of Procedure of the EPLA
Court."
After this latest setback McCreevy told the Financial Times that
he was "pessimistic" that any progress would ever be made.
“I thought what we were proposing here would not be that
difficult for member states to accept," he said. "But anything of
significance is becoming increasingly difficult to to make progress
on.”
A separate plan for a Community Patent has also failed to make
significant progress since being proposed by the European
Commission in 2000. It would give inventors the option of obtaining
a single patent that would be legally valid throughout the European
Union, saving significant costs in the protection of an invention.
But a failure to agree on the requirements for the translation of
patents and on how infringements of patents which might arise as a
result of mistranslations should be treated has stalled
progress.
