Overview

The EU Council of Ministers (Competitiveness Council) recently announced that it reached 'political agreement' at its meeting on 4 December 2009 on major reforms to the patent system in Europe. The reforms comprise:
- agreement on the main features of a future pan-European patent court
- agreement on the text of the EU Patent Regulation
- agreement that the translation arrangements for future EU patents should be dealt with in a separate regulation
- a common understanding on renewal fees for the future EU patent and co-operation between patent offices.

The proposed EU patent will be a unitary patent covering the territory of the EU .
Agreement on the text of the regulation for an EU patent has been stalled for years, largely due to failure to reach agreement over the translation regime that should apply to EU patents.
The translation regime is a critical issue as much of the cost of patenting in Europe is due to the requirement to file translations in multiple languages of the text of the entire patent.

On the other hand, the function of the patent system to encourage publication and dissemination of inventions will be compromised if translations are not filed, as many EU residents will be unable to understand the contents of the patent.

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