Source: http://www.april.org/en/patents-europe-barniers-mess
Timestamp: 2014-12-19 17:28:42
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Patents in Europe: Barnier's mess | April
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Submitted by mchauvet on 25 June, 2011 - 15:48 in Software patents
English translation by the APRIL translations workgroup: coinpan, echarp, el, Fragilbert, Fred, gibus, laurent, Marianne, Nancy, Nico, odile, satanas_g, stéphanie, SYSY, Temporalior, Thibz, Ypll and anonymous contributors.
Table of contents An unsettling ending to the press conference
Some explanations before the show
Enhanced cooperation authorization at full steam
The last minute stumbling
Decoding Michel Barnier's confusion
Up to the show: the Council meeting
Commission: Michel BARNIER, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services
Germany: Peter HINTZE, Parliamentary State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology
Belgium: Vincent VAN QUICKENBORNE, Federal Minister for Enterprise and Simplification
Ireland: Geraldine BYRNE NASON, Deputy Permanent Representative
Portugal: Fernando SERRASQUEIRO, State Secretary for Trade, Services and Consumer Protection
Latvia: Juris PŪCE, State Secretary, Ministry of Economics
Netherlands: Derk OLDENBURG, Deputy Permanent Representative
United Kingdom: Baroness WILCOX, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Greece: Anna DIAMANTOPOULOU, Minister for Education
France: Éric BESSON, Minister for Industry, Energy and [Digital] Economy
Slovenia: Viljem PŠENIČNY, State Secretary, Ministry of Economy
Czech Republic: Martin TLAPA, Deputy Minister for Industry and Trade
Romania: Constantin Claudiu STAFIE, Secretary of State, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Business Environment
Slovakia: Peter JAVORČÍK, Deputy Permanent Representative
Italy: Stefano SAGLIA, State Secretary for Economic development
Spain: Diego LÓPEZ GARRIDO, Secretary of State for the European Union, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation
Luxembourg: Jeannot KRECKÉ, Minister for Economic Affairs and Foreign Trade
Council Legal Service: Hubert LEGAL, Legal Adviser to the European Council and Director-General of the Council Legal Service
Italy: Stefano SAGLIA, Secretary of State for Economic Developement
Journalist from the Swiss News Agency
Answer of the Hungarian Presidency: Zoltán CSÉFALVAY, Junior Minister for Strategic Affairs, Ministry of National Economy
Answer of the Commission: Michel BARNIER, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services
Several future perspectives
An unsettling ending to the press conference
It is almost 2pm, this Thursday 10th of March 2011, when Michel Barnier, European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, concludes the press conference that followed a meeting of the Council of the European Union. Whereas the conference began with the triumphant announcement of an "historical day for innovation", the Commissioner seems troubled, hesitant, and in a hurry to end a press conference which lasted in all and for all some twenty minutes, with only two reporters to interview the representatives of the Commission and of the Hungarian presidency. Let us see this1…
Following a question from a Hungarian reporter, asking (in French):
Is there any solution that is acceptable to all Member States and also to the Court? Thank you.
Michel Barnier answers :
I'm confident, and I'm determined as well: determined to find a solution which is in everybody's interest. After a very rigorous and very careful examination of the court's ruling, we have to find the best possible solution, which will cover all appeals from the EU. We'll work towards this solution, which will provide a stable framework at a reasonable cost. On the patent itself, the issue that was clearly decided this morning by the Council, the solution that has been accepted by 25 Member States is economically essential and legally solid. Really to think it's acceptable, and when a bit more time has elapsed, it may well be acceptable to all EU Member States.
The Frenchman is acting with caution, to say the least. The take-home message of this speech is that the Commission needs to work out a solution, which means that there is a problem. That being the case, the “historical” nature of the proposal adopted by 25 Member States may be put into question. The Commissioner may well remind that the proposal was “legally solid, economically essential, and politically acceptable”. But his using that phrase no less than four times that day shows that it is just rhetoric, well prepared by some communication counselor —or by himself. In any case, it will take much more to share l Barnier's sham confidence and determination.
First of all, we need to know what the decision taken by the European Council, this morning of March the 11th, 2011, really is.
It is quite simple: the ministers of Member States have simply decided to legislate, not among 27, but among only the 25 participating Member States. This is called enhanced cooperation. This procedure is allowed by the EU Treaties in order to limit risks of blocking, when a consensus cannot be reached among all Member States. Hence, in a usual co-decision procedure, a directive shall be voted by the European Parliament on one side, and by a majority — or the unanimity, depending on the topic — of the ministers of all 27 Member States on the other side. In the enhanced cooperation framework, the directive shall still be voted by the Parliament, but only ministers of the countries participating in the enhanced cooperation shall agree on the text.
So the Council decided to launch an enhanced cooperation. On which subject?
The objective of the present enhanced cooperation is to create a unitary patent and its associated translation arrangements. Well. But how unitary could this patent be, while in Europe, the centralised Patent Office in Munich already grants patents for the whole continent?
Actually, the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich was created on 1973 to take charge of the patent pre-granting stage. That is, they receive patent applications and examine them. According to the examinations, if the patentability criteria are fulfilled, the EPO grants a European patent. Then, this patent is split into a bundle of national patents, that are valid in each designated country. This procedure avoids patent applicants to go through each national patent office, with risks of divergent views in all the examinations.
But, since a European patent holder has actually a bundle of national patents, she has to pay periodically renewal fees for her patent title to remain valid, this in each country in question, for a maximum period of 20 years. Moreover, if ever a competitor comes up with a product or process that is likely to counterfeit her patent, she has to sue the alleged counterfeiter before courts of each and every country.
It is therefore understandable why the patent granted by the EPO, so far, is not very much unitary. It seems desirable to simplify the procedure, by going to a unique patent office, over the whole lifetime of the patent, and by getting rulings on potential litigations that would be enforceable throughout the whole continent. Still, to set up such a unitary patent, why is the EU not legislating the usual way, but instead is going through enhanced cooperation?
The idea of a unitary patent under a unified jurisdiction is almost as old as the creation of the EPO. Still, all attempts at creating such a system have failed. The last project to date was issued by the European Commission in 2007. Since then, the EU Council has worked on a project defining a unified jurisdiction, having powers with regards to the litigations on the current European patent delivered by the EPO, as well as with the unitary patent to come.
However, to settle a unitary patent, it is required to decide in which language this patent can be accepted. At the EPO, patent applications are accepted in English, German, and French. Next, when the European patent is granted and forks in a bundle of national patents, each country where a national patent is registered asks for a translation into its own language. However, some States endorsed the London Agreement, thus allowing national patents to be valid in another country without the requirement to be translated, provided the patent is written in one of the three official languages of the EPO. The London Agreement is an optional agreement for countries which are members of the Europeen Patent Convention (EPC) — international agreement governing the EPO and defining the rules for granting a European patent from the Munich office. To date, 13 countries have endorsed the London Agreement. For other countries, a translation of the patents is still required.
Likewise, the EU Council and the European Commission proposed in 2009 that the unitary patent should be requested in one of the three official languages of EPO. Nationals from Member States whose official language is neither English, German nor French, should have the opportunity to obtain for free a translation in one of these languages, the financial cost being assumed by the EU, the cost being hopefully reduced as soon as automatic translation software have proven enough reliability.
But some Member States are not satisfied with these language rules. Mainly, Spain and Italy — which by the way did not sign the London Agreement— dispute the fact one can request a unitary patent in German or French, whereas Spanish and Italian, widely used around the world, would be excluded. These two governments would prefer, if absolutely needed, that only English may be available, but not German and French over their own language.
Officially, the Council activities stumbled over this problem, while the Treaty enforces the Council to unanimously legislate about the linguistic regime of the unitary patent. That is why, in December 2010, twelve countries2 ask for usage of the enhanced cooperation procedure in order to go ahead without being stuck by the unanimity requirement for the linguistic regime, which reveals unreachable. They will be joined in February 2011 by 13 other Member States3, leaving only Spain and Italy out of a possible enhanced cooperation.
In order to legislate following the enhanced cooperation procedure, it is necessary that the Commission submit this proposition to the Council, after Parliament's authorization. Since November 2010, when the Council established the unanimity about the unitary patent's language rules would be almost impossible to reach and then it should go through the way of the enhanced cooperation, things went really fast.
The first 12 countries have officially asked on December 10th 2010 the Commission to submit a proposal to that effect. The Commission had submitted its proposal four days later, on December 14th 2010. On January 11th 2011, Klaus-Heiner Lehne, the German conservative rapporteur, chairman of the parliamentary committee for Legal Affairs, submitted his report to the European Parliament authorizing this enhanced cooperation. His report was adopted on February 14th 2011 by the European Parliament during a plenary session, without much discussion and with only an opposition by principle from the Green, Communists and Sovereignists groups.
Thus March 10th, 2011 should have been the last formality to launch this enhanced cooperation on the bleeding edge. Yes, but…
But two days before the Council's meeting, crash! The unitary patent's open road hits a brick wall: the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that the proposed unified jurisdiction is contrary to EU law and even questions the very nature of this legal order. What happened? Why does the CJEU give its opinion on a political project that had been drafted for several decades? And what exactly does this review mean?
In fact, if the linguistic issue is only the top of the disagreement iceberg between Member States, it is far from being the only or main divergence, for anybody who followed the numerous meetings where the Council worked on this topic since 2007. Thus the project of unified jurisdiction raises criticism and concern among some States, which question the feasibility of the project with respect to their own constitution, or, more globally speaking, towards EU treaties. Why? Simply because the project opens the possibility to introduce a special jurisdiction.
Until now, litigations about patents are processed by ordinary courts, in official local languages, by judges with the qualifications required by local law authorities. The unified jurisdiction project upsets this by setting up a European court for patents, made of several national chambers — in countries where many patent litigations occurs — or regional chambers — by grouping countries with little patent litigations — and a central court. In some cases, trials could take place in a foreign language for one of the parties. Judges would be patent experts over all, selected by their law or technical skills — ie : judges could be not magistrates, but engineers.
Facing the doubts expressed by several Member States that such a construction be possible given each State's constitution, the Council decided in 2009 to refer the matter to the CJEU. It was a smart move since on March 8th 2011 the CJEU condemned the project: implementing such a special court would undermine the entire judicial framework of the EU, and with it all the democratic safeguards it provides. In short: The CJEU has prevented the establishment of a judicial monster!
All set with these few explanations, Commissioner Barnier's troubled speech at the end of the press conference becomes intelligible. The Commission must indeed work on a solution for a unified jurisdiction which will answer CJEU criticisms. Without a unified jurisdiction, the unitary patent would have almost no interest. What is the point of a unique title if, when it has to be used against possible counterfeiters, this has to be done in multiple courts? The only remaining advantage could be translation cost reduction, but it would not bring anything compared to the possible savings already offered by London Agreement.
No, Michel Barnier knows well enough that there has to be a unified court. Otherwise the patent would not have any other future than to fall in History's oblivion, while the Commissioner was boasting that he was the Commissioner who had finally managed to conclude this project after the many failures of his predecessors: Mario Monti, Frits Bolkestein or Charlie McCreevy. But the CJEU opinion is such that the Commissioner has no backup solution to the project that has just failed. Due to this, the French Commissioner will be forced on this Thursday 10th of March 2011 to engage in the perilous duty of delaying the questions regarding the jurisdictional system, while trying not to brake the momentum in the establishment of a unitary patent.
The whole Council meeting which held before the press conference enrolls in the same pattern. The Commission and the Member States who participate in the enhanced cooperation — i.e. all countries but Spain and Italy — will quickly pass over the jurisdictional issue, by admitting that they will have to work on a solution after CJEU Opinion. Which solution? No one will give any clue! And yet, all will vote the authorization to launch the enhanced cooperation on the unitary patent.
It is not only funny to see how the different protagonists in this meeting address this slack-rope show; it is also full of lessons about what could happen in the next few weeks about patents in Europe. Hence, we selected, in all the speeches, everything dealing with the jurisdictional system and Opinion from the European Court of Justice. In a meeting which last more than 90 minutes, this question was considered during less than 40 minutes. In the following, we will comment on each of these speeches and we will try to give the keys to decipher them. We modified slightly the order in which they appear, so that the narrative interest of our deciphering is preserved.
The rest of the discussion which we haven't retained can be simply summarized: "it is necessary for the EU to adopt a unitary patent; it is important for competitiveness— some ministers going to the point of claiming that employment would improve thanks to such a patent — everyone would have liked this to have been unanimously approved, but so be it if Spain and Italy refuse to agree, it shall still be done and it must be voted on today to move forward towards an enhanced cooperation, without forgetting to thank the successive presidencies of the EU that have led the Council's work". This summary is only slightly simplifying the statements made during this meeting. Those interested can see for themselves on the full video of the Council meeting (1:36:42).
Since Hungary presides to the European Union during this first semester 2011, the master of ceremony is then the Hungarian Prime Minister. Disappointment: he does absolutely not talk of the jurisdictional issue, nor of CJEU Opinion, except when indicating that the Council members are allowed to discuss this point.
So Michel Barnier has the honor to evoke the subject first:
Now, I have to say of course that we're not at the end of the road yet. Once we actually take the decision to launch enhanced cooperation today, we'll have to base ourselves on a regulation which the Commission will be submitting on the 30th of March, on the whole of issue of patent. So we have to work on that. And then, separately from that, we're going to have to look at the Court of Justice's ruling and look at the whole issue of jurisdiction. And we will be making proposal on that in parallel, because they are separate and different issues. But we do need to make progress on both in parallel, so that we establish everything that we need to deal with patents in Europe.
His strategy is just as we have deciphered it during the conclusion of the press conference: the Commissioner has no idea of a solution to establish a unified jurisdiction that might comply with the requirements set by the CJEU. He therefore temporizes by promising to work on solving this issue, without giving any hint as to what could such a solution be. For this major obstacle not to disturb the long quiet river— or rather the rapid torrent — leading to the establishment of the unitary patent, he struggles to present the matters as being independent: on the one hand the regulations on the unitary patent system and its linguistic matters, and on the other hand the jurisdictional system. Yet the Frenchman lets a contradiction slip from his discourse: both of these matters are part of a one and only architecture, implying that a unitary patent and a unified court are useless without each other. In short, both aspects of the project would follow parallel paths yet they would meet at some point. To hell with mathematical rigor!
Fortunately for Michel Barnier, numerous ministers will support the differentiation between a unitary patent and a unified jurisdiction. This is precisely the Commissioner's intention: to have a vote today from Member States on an enhanced cooperation on the unitary patent, while considering the jurisdiction matter as a completely separate one, which could be settled afterwards.
As for the Opinion of the Court of Justice, it does not stand in the way of this decision. It talks about the acceptability of patents and not the process of granting the patents: these are two different issues and they should not be confused. So therefore, we should take the decision today as planned.
If the German representative's speech is clear and does not call forth further analysis, it is not unnecessary to recall Germany was a leading force in the unitary patent case. In the European patent landscape, Germany is without a doubt on pole position: the headquarters for the European Patent Office are in Munich, and Germany is the first country for patent applications as well as for patents granted by the EPO4, an estimated5 50 to 70% of all patent litigations end up before German courts, and the analysis of the unified jurisdiction project, which has just been rejected by the CJEU, was greatly inspired by the German system, in particular as to a distinction between counterfeiting and nullity claims. In short, Germany is strongly in favor of the unitary patent project, if not its initiator, and one understands that its representative in the Council does not linger on a declaration that could put the whole scheme at risk, and that he would rather proceed at all costs.
The question that we have to look at is what are the reasons to take this decision today? And are there any reason for postponing it? I cannot think of one single reason to postpone this decision, because this is just a mandate to have enhanced cooperation. So we're not actually talking about the content of the unitary patent — that will be adopted later on the proposal from the Commission and the members of the Council who'd be able to take account of all the elements, including potentially certain aspects of the recent opinion from the European Court of Justice. Secondly, the opinion from the Court, let's be honest, is 100% in line with what the Advocate General had said so this is no surprise at all. We've got to find a solution, and the Commissioner has already said that we need to tackle this in a correct and efficient way. But a problem with the process for granting patents is not something that stands in the way of our decision today. Let's not lose the momentum that we built up. As Queen said "don't stop us now". We've got to make progress, we've got to continue to move. Only in that way will we have a credible Europe.
Obviously, the content of the Opinion from the CJEU is the best reason to postpone the Council's decision. Without a unified jurisdiction, the unitary patent has no future, so the representatives within the Council could have very well waited for a new proposal on the jurisdictional part to be presented before moving forward. That is what April had called for from the Members of the European Parliament in Februrary 2011. Unfortunately, this has been unsuccessful. So much for the European Parliament's credibility: it has accepted a project which was challenged only three weeks later, as had forewarned April.
But the Belgian Minister's speech gives us the opportunity to review the opinions released by the Advocates General of CJEU. They assist the CJEU by presenting their independent opinions on legal questions referred to the Court. In August 2010, a leak exposed the opinion of the Advocates General on the topic of the jurisdiction of the unitary patent. This opinion concluded on the incompatibility of the project with the Treaties on four counts. First, it objected that the Court considered it impossible to challenge the EPO's administrative decisions — the grant or the refusal of a patent, as well as the invalidation or the confirmation during the opposition to an already issued patent — in front of an independent court. Secondly, the project was no sufficiently clear with regard to the compliance of EU law by the patent court. Thirdly, the accepted languages when facing the central division of the patent office, only English, German and French, could infringe the right of defense. Finally, the possible remedies to breaches by the patent court to EU law and its non-compliance with its obligation to make a preliminary ruling to the CJEU were deemed insufficient. But each of these criticisms could have been corrected through amendments to the draft. The patent court could have had jurisdiction on appeals to EPO's administrative decisions or an administrative court of the EU, dedicated to patent-related matters and authorized to refer to the CJEU, could have been created. The p