Top EU legal officer rejects Spain, Italy single patent case
Photo © Alexander Raths - Fotolia
(BRUSSELS) - Efforts by Spain and Italy to prevent adoption of a single EU patent system by their EU partners should be dismissed, the chief legal officer of the European Court of Justice recommended Tuesday.
Last week, EU industry ministers approved the creation of the new patent system under an "enhanced cooperation" process which allows member states to go ahead if they can get more than a third of their peers to agree.
However, Spain and Italy challenged this procedure in protest that the new patents would be in three languages only -- English, French and German -- and decided to take their case to the ECJ, the EU's highest court.
On Tuesday, the Advocate General, Yves Both, whose opinion the ECJ normally follows, said the court "should reject all the pleas put forward by Spain and Italy and, consequently, dismiss both actions."
Announcing his decision shortly before the European Parliament is expected to approve a plan which has been some 40 years in the making, Bot said the EU did have the authority to adopt the enhanced cooperation procedure.
He said use of this power could only take place as a last resort and in this case, the EU had correctly established that no accord could be agreed otherwise.
A single patent system would not disadvantage some member states, as argued, he said, adding that the language provisions alone did not determine the validity of the enhanced cooperation procedure.
The new single patent system is intended to provide a simpler, cheaper and more effective system to manage 60,000 patent applications a year across the 27-member EU.
It should be in place by 2014, with the cost of filing patent applications falling progressively from around 30,000 euros ($39,000) to 5,000 euros, the EU executive says.