Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-03-30-Speech-4-046"
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"en.20000330.3.4-046"2
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"Mr President, may I begin by thanking Members of this Parliament very much indeed for the questions that they have put and the comments that they have made. Perhaps you will allow me to pass a few comments on what the various Members of this Parliament have said.
Lastly, it is the intention of the Commission to issue a document to substantiate the construction of a European patent before the summer and I look forward to entering into a dialogue with Parliament on the substance of that document.
May I begin by saying in reply to Mr Rothley that indeed the Commission has reserved to itself the right to oppose the patent in a formal way. As I have said earlier this morning, I wrote a letter on behalf of the Commission to the European Patent Office. I have no objection whatsoever to making that letter public. The penultimate paragraph reads as follows: “In this context, I have to inform that the College of Commissioners has already decided to take more formal action, notably to file an opposition by the Commission or the Community in case no pragmatic solution can be reached”.
In other words, whereas we prefer a negotiated settlement because it will be quicker than the nine months which is foreseen by the Patent Office rules, we have retained for ourselves the right formula to oppose the patents if no progress is made along this quicker route. So, as far as that goes, Mr Rothley may rest assured that the Commission has reserved that right to itself.
I should then like to support Mr Liese who has emphasised that there is nothing wrong with the directive. I agree with him. I think that the directive is a good one. Indeed, Mr Rothley himself has said that the directive is the first of its kind in the world and that it has received universal acclaim.
Certainly if I look at paragraph five of the directive where it says that certain processes are not to be considered patentable, then it seems to me that the directive is perfectly clear. Mr Blokland has said that the directive is unclear and inconsistent and certainly the Commission will be very interested in a substantiated view of that statement.
It was also mentioned by Frau Gebhardt that the cloning of human beings should be forbidden. Well, President, it is forbidden. May I draw the attention of Mrs Gebhardt to the fact that the directive specifically forbids that. It seems to me that that is all we need to do, provided, of course, that the directive is properly applied.
The last issue I should like to deal with is the matter of the Community patent. Several speakers this morning have spoken about the European patents. Now, a European patent is what the European Patent Office grants. The proper term to use is a Community patent. In other words it is one application made to the European Patent Office in Munich but that office would then grant a Community patent and that would apply at one go to the whole European Union. We are working on that. I should like to say to Frau Gebhardt and Mr De Clercq who mentioned this that we are certainly working hard at realising the possibility of having a Community patent.
It is not an easy thing, principally because the European Patent Office is not a Community institution. So what we want the European Patent Office to do is something on behalf of the European Commission while the Office itself is not a Community institution. That presents us with certain legal problems and we are trying to solve them.
It is indeed true that the language problems are considerable. The average cost of a patent is about EUR 30 000, much higher than in the United States, and that is because 40% of those costs are taken up by language problems – the translation costs – and we are trying to get to grips with that problem."@en1
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