5.1.   PROTECTION OF PATENTS IN THE EU

 

Information source:           European Patent Office

Website:                            http://www.european-patent-office.org/index.en.php

 

A European patent can be obtained by filing a single application in one of the official languages of the European Patent Office (English, French or German) in a unitary procedure before the EPO and is valid in as many of the 20 contracting states as the applicant cares to designate.

A European patent affords the same rights in the designated contracting states as a national patent granted in any of these states.

How to find info on the website of the EPO?

1) Select at the website of EPO ‘Grant procedure – How to get a patent’ for information about:

 

2) Select “About us - publications” in order to view a list with useful publications.

                Ex.:         Patent granting procedure  -  Guide for applicants

 

3) Find info about online filing of a patent application (epoline) via:

                http://www.epoline.org
epoline® is the name given to the range of online products and services designed by the European Patent Office (EPO) to allow patent applicants, attorneys and other users to conduct their business with the EPO electronically in a state-of-the-art secure environment, protected by smart card or username/password access.


Via epoline® entrepreneurs can

4) Find info about existing registered patents via:

                http://www.european-patent-office.org/epidos/epr.htm

The Register of European Patents provides detailed information on all European and Euro-PCT patent applications. The system provides bibliographic data such as title of the invention, classification, publication dates, name and address of the applicant, inventor, attorney and the latest information about the status of the granting procedure of the patent application.

 

 

The Community patent, also known as the European Community Patent or EC patent and sometimes abbreviated as COMPAT, is a patent law measure being debated within the European Union, which would allow individuals and companies to obtain a unitary patent throughout the European Union. The Community patent should not be confused with European patents which are granted under the European Patent Convention. European patents, once granted, become a bundle of nationally enforceable patents, in the designated states. This can be expensive for the patentee in that enforcement must be carried out through national courts in individual countries, and for a third party in that revocation cannot be accomplished centrally once the nine-month opposition period has expired.
The Community patent is intended to solve both of these problems, and also to provide a patent right that is consistent across Europe, thus fulfilling one of the key principles of the Internal Market in that the same market conditions should exist wherever in Europe trade is carried out - different patent rights in different countries presents a distortion of this principle.
In view of the difficulties in reaching an agreement on the community patent, other legal agreements have been proposed outside the European Union legal framework to reduce the cost of translation (of patents when granted) and litigation, namely the London Agreement, which entered into force on May 1, 2008, and the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), which is as of 2008 only a proposal.