There are also some repercussions on the way the organisation functions internally. Our supervisory body, the Administrative Council, for instance, is composed of representatives of the member states. Today decisions require a three-quarters majority, but as the number of member countries increases this will begin to impact on the effectiveness of the administrative council. Already there are a huge number of meetings, and the decision-making process can be difficult. Enlargement will mean that we have to find mechanisms for streamlining this process, and one proposal is that the majority should be reduced to two-thirds.
Patent holders have to litigate in the individual countries concerned.
One implication of this is that you cannot go to a German court in order to challenge the validity of the British part of your European patent, and vice versa. This not only has cost implications, but is the source of some legal uncertainty. The best example of this was the Epilady case - which concerned a depilatory device for ladies. This was litigated before many courts in the world, but in Europe the result was that while it was held to be infringed by the German and Dutch courts under the so-called doctrine of equivalence, the British courts came to a different conclusion. Again, a protocol solution seems most promising.