European patent reform...

Interesting moments in European Commission from patenting point of view. Commission is trying to simply system so that EPO grant would mean automatic validation on every member country. One never knows what will be the outcome but...

If this goes thru winners of the system are inventors and all companies filing in Europe. New system will reduce cost of EP significantly. No need to translate and validate in every area. At the moment most companies validate EP patents only in handful of member countries. Rationale is cost and cost only. If you could get full EU coverage with a patent you would take it.

Not all good with out some downside. Bad news for many patent attorney offices with significant revenues coming currently from mandatory translations...

Here some copy paste from proposal:

"The Commission's proposal builds on the existing language regime of the EPO. The Commission proposes that EU Patents will be examined and granted in one of the official languages of the EPO - English, French or German. The granted patent will be published in this language which will be the authentic (i.e. legally binding) text. The publication will include translations of the claims into the other two EPO official languages. The claims are the section of the patent defining the scope of protection of the invention.

No further translations into other languages will be required from the patent proprietor except in the case of a legal dispute concerning the EU patent. In this case, the patent proprietor may be required to provide further translations at his or her own expense. For example, the proprietor may have to supply a copy of the patent into the language of an alleged infringer, or into the language of the court proceedings when this is different from the language of the patent."