Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-254"
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"en.20000705.8.3-254"2
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"Mr President, I am very grateful for this opportunity to inform Parliament about a decision which was taken by the Commission this morning relating to a proposal for a regulation to create a Community patent. That is in line with a request from the Lisbon European Council, which called for such a Community patent to be in place by the year 2001. Parliament explicitly supported this initiative in its contributions to the extensive consultation process which the Commission launched through its Green Paper on Innovation in Europe in 1997.
We need a Community patent in order to stimulate innovation, which is a key factor for growth, competitiveness and job creation in Europe. Our industry, as well as our research and scientific community, have stressed for some time now the need for a patent which is affordable, valid throughout the Community and which offers legal security. That is an ambitious goal. Our proposal meets this ambitious goal as it aims at creating just such a patent. The Community patent will co-exist with, and complement, existing systems by offering a more attractive alternative for those businesses, both big and small, operating within the internal market. Our proposal builds extensively on the existing European patent system which governs the rules and procedures leading to the grant of European patents, and this approach requires that the Community should adhere to the European patent convention.
By virtue of the Community patent regulation, patents delivered by the European Patent Office in Munich may become Community patents. The Community patent as proposed by the Commission will have the following characteristics: a Community patent will have a unitary character, it will be valid throughout the Community and it will be the subject of a single set of rules. This will reduce the uncertainty linked to fifteen different national legislations and, of course, after enlargement, many more. Legal certainty will be considerably reinforced by the creation of a centralized judicial system which will guarantee the quality and coherence of case law relating to Community patents. The creation of such a centralised jurisdiction requires a change to the EC Treaty. We now have a window of opportunity with the ongoing Intergovernmental Conference. We must not miss that opportunity and I should like to count on the vigorous support of Members of this Parliament in order to ensure that the IGC takes up this issue in all earnest.
Finally, our proposal will help to reduce considerably the costs of patents in Europe by not requiring supplementary translations of the patent once it has been delivered in one of the three languages of the European Patent Office.
May I insist on the need for an ambitious approach. Previous attempts to create a Community patent, in particular through the Luxembourg convention of 1989, failed because of a lack of ambition on the two key issues: firstly, the cost and secondly, the litigation. We must convince Member States of the need to change the Treaty to create a centralised jurisdiction for Community patent litigation. When looking at our proposal, one should also anticipate the consequences of enlargement on the costs and litigation in this respect. If we are anything less than ambitious in this field, we shall simply not provide our industry, our research and development experts with the modern patent which they need."@en1
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