EXPERT VIEW
VANESSA STAINTHORPE, PARTNER & PATENT ATTORNEY,
HARRISON GODDARD FOOTE LLP
This issue’s Expert View comes from Vanessa
Stainthorpe, partner and patent attorney at
Harrison Goddard Foote LLP. She provides an
update about changes on the horizon for the
patenting of inventions in Europe.
The European Patent Office has been granting patents since
1978 but these European patents are perhaps not the panEuropean protection you might expect. A granted European
patent is actually a bundle of individual national patents,
effective in each country where the relevant fees have
been paid.
Renewal fees have to be paid annually in each country where
it is desired to keep the patent in force and translations into
the local language are also required in some countries.
Patent infringement must be dealt with on a country-bycountry basis but on the up side, since the individual national
patents stand independently, any attack by a third party on
the validity of a patent in one country does not necessarily
affect the status of the patent in other countries.
be involved? Which countries will be excluded? Who will fund
the new Unified Patent Court?
The Unitary Patent is a proposal for a single patent which
has effect across Europe, administered centrally by the
European Patent Office and introducing a Unified Patent
Court to handle Europe-wide litigation of patents. This
proposal potentially applies to 25 EU member states (all
except Spain and Italy) whereas European patents at the
European Patent Office cover up to 38 countries.
On the other hand, the patent application process is long
and it is likely that applications being prepared now will be
affected by the new regime.
Proposals for a Unitary Patent have been on the table for
over 40 years and it is now the closest it has ever been to
existing, even so, the proposed Unitary Patent system is
unlikely to come int