The Luxembourg Convention, signed in 1975 and amended in 1989 by an Agreement (89/695/EC), would have allowed the transformation of national stages of the European patent into a single community stage. The Convention never entered into force because only seven States ratified it.
Following this failure, a Commission's Green Paper on the Community Patent and the European patent system allowed to reach the adoption of a proposal for a Council Regulation adopted on August 1, 2000 and presented by the Commission (COM 2000 (412) final). The regulation will be enforceable without the need of a ratification.
The proposal for a Council Regulation on Community Patent is drafted in the view of decreasing the costs for obtaining a patent in Europe and of having to use an unique judicial system in case of litigations.
According to this proposal, the European Patent Office will ensure the granting and the management of Community Patents ; the European Community will access to the Munich Convention, becoming therefore a territory for which an unique patent can be granted. The actual systems of national and European patents will coexist with the Community System. However, one can think that this last system will soon be choosen by most of applicants.
Moreover, a Community Court will be created to deal with the disputes relating to the infringement and the validity of the Community patents.
The proposal for a Council Regulation on Community Patent contains six chapters : (the articles are linked to the Commission's comment (link COM within each article)
- Chapter I : General provisions (Articles 1 to 3)
- Chapter II : Patent Law
- Section 1 : Right to the patent (Articles 4 to 6)
- Section 2 : Effects of the Community patent and the Community patent application (Articles 7 to 13)
- Section 3 : The Community patent as an object of property (Articles 14 to 24)
- Chapter III : Renewal, lapse and invalidity of the Community patent
- Section 1 : Renewal lapse (Articles 25 to 27)
- Section 2 : Invalidity of the Community patent (Articles 28 and 29)
- Chapter IV : Jurisdiction and procedure in legal actions relating to the Community patent
- Section 1 : Actions concerning the validity, infringement and use of the Community patent (Articles 30 to 45)
- Section 2 : Jurisdiction and procedure in other actions relating to the Community Patent (Articles 46 to 52)
- Section 3 : Arbitration (Article 53)
- Chapter V : Impact on national law
- Prohibition of simultaneous protection (Article 54)
- National utility models and utility certificates (Article 55)
- Chapter VI : Final provisions (Articles 56 to 63)
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