Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-05-Speech-3-262"
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"en.20000705.8.3-262"2
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"May I explain that the Commission's proposal, if accepted by Parliament and by the Council, does not take away any possibilities that at present exist. So if the Commission's proposal is accepted there will be three ways of getting patents. First of all there will be the national patents which will be delivered in the national language and will be granted by the national office for the granting of patents. That exists now and will continue to exist.
The second possibility that will continue to exist is the European patent granted by the European Patent Office. The European patent is not to be confused with the Community patent. The European patent is a basket of national patents, so an inventor would apply for a patent, for example, for Benelux, France and Germany, five countries out of 15. If the application is approved he would get a patent for those five countries, and jurisdiction would be spread over the courts of those five countries. That possibility – that is the reality at the moment – will continue to exist.
The third possibility we are now discussing is one patent of unitary character, in other words it is granted and then it applies to the whole Community. That is why it is called the Community patent. May I stress that this is an option inventors have, they can go either for a national patent or for a European patent or for a Community patent. The Commission does not intend to take away any possibilities that exist at present.
Let me address Mrs Thors who asked about decentralisation in this field. We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have our cake and eat it. In other words, if we want a Community patent, granted at a single place, namely Munich, which at one go applies to the whole Community, we must have a central jurisdiction to judge litigation for patents. That is why the Commission has proposed that a tribunal to judge litigation in the case of intellectual property be set up, and the logical place for that tribunal to exist is in Luxembourg. That is also what I would like to say to Mr MacCormick. We are not concerned here with any geographical centrality – although I must admit I do not know whether Luxembourg is or is not in the centre of the European Union. Certainly with the enlargement of the European Union the geographic centre of the Union would shift eastwards. We have chosen the place where the European Court of Justice is located for the Community's tribunal on intellectual property.
May I come back to Mrs Thors and say that as far as small and medium-sized enterprises are concerned, the Commission proposal does not take away any possibilities for small and medium-sized enterprises to partake of inventions published by the European Patent Office. 75% of patents are delivered in English, and the current language in the world of intellectual property, in the world of patents, is English. Secondly there are national patent offices. Let them use their capacity to enlighten small and medium enterprises about what is going on in Munich and what has been published in English, French or German. In that way they can stimulate and help the small and medium enterprises existing in those respective countries.
Lastly, on the matter of patents for biotechnological inventions, which was raised both in the previous round of questions and just now again, may I stress that the decision taken by the Commission this morning does not change anything in the area that was alluded to by both speakers. The question then arises: does the Commission have room for manoeuvre in this respect? Only those people who have no ideas never change their ideas, so it would be bizarre if the Commission had no room for manoeuvre. We are considering that, we have received the letter from the President of the French Republic, we shall answer that letter obviously, there is already a note which is available on our website and we shall do our best to steer a course which is the most sensible one."@en1
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