The European Commission will propose, on 1 July, a translation system for the future Community patent based on the three principal languages: English, French and German. The aim is to reduce the cost of this protection of inventions in the EU, which currently is much higher than in the United States or Japan, since a patent holder must register the patent in every European country where protection is sought and thus have the patent specification translated into each of the national languages.

A draft regulation establishing a Community patent (the culmination of three decades of attempts) has been on the negotiating table since 2000. There are a number of stumbling blocks, however, and language rules are the main problem in the Council. Commissioner Michel Barnier (internal market) conducted intense informal discussions with the member states to develop this proposal, which is based on the three working languages of the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPO issues European patents in the framework of the European Patent Convention (EPC), a treaty with 36 signatories, including the EU27. The Commission’s 2000 proposal already limits translation of patent claims (the key element of a patent) to the three EPO languages.

This language matter is also one of the priorities of the Belgian EU Presidency, which hopes to work out a compromise by the end of the year. Doing so will not be easy because unanimity is required. Spain and Italy have repeatedly blocked the issue because they wish to maintain the possibility of registering patents in their own language.