EU braced for patent-battle revisited

Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services said: “What industry wants is a one-stop-shop. People don't care how this is achieved. But they want action…I believe the time has come to make a concerted push to improve the patent system in Europe.” 

The answer, he believes is the EPLA - “a unified system which gives clarity and reliability to industry while avoiding both over-centralisation and fragmentation". The EPLA, he says, would also contribute to the urgent need to bring the European system up-to-speed with the legal systems of the software producing superpowers: "It is D-day for Europe when it comes to intellectual property protection...We are facing continuous, and not always equal, competition from the US and Japan, but also from emerging economic superpowers like China or India." 

The joint motion from the PES, Greens/EFA and GUE/NGL demands more "balance between the interests of patent holders and the broader public interest in innovation and competitive markets". It states the EPLA will compromise judicial independence, increase litigation costs and expose SMEs to greater risks. 

They also believe that bestowing central patent-authority on an independent body would be against the principle of a united Europe: “The creation of a non-EU European Patent Judiciary (EPJ) and a non-EU European Patent Court would call into question the commitment of its contracting states (that are also Member States) to the Community courts and the Single Market,” their resolution states. 

Maria Berger, spokeswoman of the PES on legal affairs, explained: "We are all for improvements to the European patent system, but we must continue the search for solutions within the framework of the EU. That includes the need for democratic control and truly independent courts." 

Italian MEP Umberto Guidoni (GUE/NGL) warned: "After the failure of the software patent directive, the EPO has come up with another proposal backed by McCreevy and it's even more undemocratic and dangerous than the previous one. EPLA is about much more than software patents. Still, software patents are one of the key motivations behind it. The Parliament made it very clear last year that we largely disagree with the EPO's granting practice in certain areas. That's why we don't want a new court that would be controlled by basically the same people as the EPO." 

Conversely, the chief negotiators of the EPP-ED and ALDE groups want the Parliament to support McCreevy's push for the EPLA. 

MEP Klaus-Heiner Lehne (EPP-ED) says the EPLA will lead to simplified procedures and lower costs for SMEs: “With EPLA we would have a standardised court procedure in all Member States instead of 25 different ones." He criticised the “anti-innovation MEPs among the Socialist Group”, saying: “They compare 'apples with pears' in order to suppress a competitive and balanced patent system in Europe. The only thing these people have on offer is to dig up the buried 20-language community patent which is never going to work." 

Speaking for UNICE, Dr. Klaus Dieter Langfinger, Vice-President Global Intellectual Property BASF, said the European Patent Litigation agreement “provides an important step in the right direction. Using the existing, well-established and experienced resources in the Courts of First Instance in various countries would make an immediate start possible without having the difficult and time-consuming task of setting up a new court without an existing infrastructure and in particular without a sufficient number of technical judges experienced in patent litigation. The proposed language-regime avoids expensive and excessive translations and thus moves us forward on the road of efficiency. A centralised Court of Second Instance would be the ultimate means to ensure a sufficient degree of harmonisation. Thus, overall, EPLA would be a leap towards consistency and efficiency and we all should support the work done [towards it] to the best extent.” 

Florian Mueller, the software developer who founded the NoSoftwarePatents campaign which lobbied against the 2002 proposal, said: "From a software-patents point of view, the EPLA would have far worse consequences than the rejected patentability directive would have had: not only would software patents become more enforceable in Europe but also would patent-holders in general be encouraged to litigate."