After 50 years, Europe gets one patent to rule them all Patent trolls have a new bridge to hide under, after the European Union (EU) today announced that it will now offer applicants the chance to win a single patent spanning 25 member nations. The EU has been haggling over this issue for more than 50 years - a unified patent system was one of the EU's founding aspirations, while a …
" trolls seem to now have a one-stop shop, and a well-priced one at that, in which to pursue their claims."
That's not how I read it. Currently a troll can simply file a case in multiple jursidictions. They only need to win one to more than cover the expenses incurred from all their filings. From the patent trolls' point of view, the more jurisdictions, the better, since if they're denied in one jurisdiction they'll just open a new case somewhere else.
If a unified EU patent can only be contested once, and the resulting ruling is binding all through the EU, it will reduce the amount of litigation. Of course trolls still have somewhere to operate and trivial patents can still be possibly granted, but let's burn the trolls under that bridge when we come to it.
At the moment you only have to patent in Germany. The Europena patent office is there and if a competitor is locked out of the German market it doesn't matter if they are allowed to copy you in some 3rd world island off the coast.
At the moment it is hugely expensive to patent anything in Britain. QCs cost you and arm and a leg (in Guineas) and you only have to say England / England and Wales / England and Scotland wrong somewhere on a form to end up paying for the QC's daughter's new pony
Also, recent Samsung events aside, the courts in Germany normally take the ludicrous view that the technical points of a patent should be decided by a judge with a background in science/engineering - rather than latin.
> “maintaining a European patent for ten years in only six European countries can be four times more expensive than it would be in the US, Japan and many other advanced economies.”
So, what they actually said was, "its currently 33% cheaper to maintain a patent in a European country than in the US or Japan or other advanced economy."
We can't have that!
The French are extremely anal about their language, among a bunch of other things, and will fight tooth and nail for meaningless privileges that show off the prestige of France (eg the horrendous waste of money that is having a second EU parliament in Strasbourg). They are especially pissed-off that English has become the world's lingua franca, and will refuse any thing being done only in English on a matter of pure reflex.
To be fair English, German ad French are the 3 languages spoken by most Europeans, so there is some sense to having 3 languages, as opposed to, I believe 23 languages to be translated / interpreted to for all official EU documents, parliamentary sessions etc. But doing things according to national pride not according to usefulness is friggin' stupid. Most Germans can speak good (if funnily accented) English. The only other real international European language is Spanish, spoken in most of S. America, all of Central America, and is a major language in the US. So English + Spanish is what the EU should be standardising on.
They are especially pissed-off that English has become the world's lingua franca, and will refuse any thing being done only in English on a matter of pure reflex.
Then we must fight back. Get the OED to eliminate the term "lingua franca", and replace it with "lingua angla" or something equally silly. And while we're at it, we could paint "AAA" on the white cliffs of Dover in letters two hundred feet high.*
* Better use water colour in preparation for being stripped of our rating next year, mind you.
Sorry to go against the grain, but I as planning to file a patent as UK-only because of the translation fees for every European country. If my idea was successful I was just prepared to take the hit on outside-UK copycats, this would actually help far more than patent trolls (who could afford the old fees and knew the beaurocracy regardless) and let smaller actual inventors a realistic chance of securing an EU patent with less hassle and less costs
UK only is indeed very cheap, and great value. You can wait for up to a year from your first filing before you make a decision about where else to file, and if you go for a European patent, there are several countries that only require translation of the claims into the other two official EPO languages (DE, FR). Take a look here for info: http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/london-agreement/key-points.html. There are of course relatively high application costs for a European patent.
Your patent attorney will be able to advise you further.
Whether part of a deep conspiracy or simply by the law of unintended consequences, this single system is a big fat target for unification with the USPTO "own stuff that already exists" process. There will come a time soon where almost everything sold will attract an "IP" tax going back to America. They have invented the most powerful and profitable machine ever made: The Lawyer.
Oh, and whilst on the Tolkein theme, a post of mine from July:
The Enemy still lacks one thing to give him strength and knowledge to beat down all resistance, break the last defences, and cover all the lands in a second darkness. He lacks the One Ring... So he is seeking it, seeking it, and all his thought is bent on it
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