The current European patent system is fragmented because patent protection is limited to the member states in which the patent is validated and patents have to be enforced in the national courts.
Despite the translation cost reductions brought by the London Protocol in 2008, a European patent owner is still faced with substantial translation costs during validation.
Litigating European patents in national courts also brings legal uncertainty, because decisions are not unified. The result is that European patents are validated in just five countries on average. To overcome these issues, an EU patent and an EU patent court are envisaged.
It is believed that a unified European patent system would make it easier and cheaper to obtain patent protection in Europe as a whole and that protection would be grounded in legal certainty.
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EU Patent, EUUPC, London Protocol, CJEU
