European Patents

Technology-rich South African companies and indeed inventors who have taken the brave step of filing foreign patents -will know that there are two ways of getting patent protection in Europe. The first is the national route, in other words filing a patent directly in the country or countries of interest. The second route is that of the European Patent. But they will also know that  the name is slightly misleading,  in that a European Patent is not a Europe-wide patent, but rather a way of getting national patents through a single authority,  the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich - the patentee  simply decides in which  European countries it wants (or can afford)  protection and in which it doesn’t.  The European Patent is therefore a bundle of national patents which are enforced by the relevant national courts. The European Patent is cumbersome and expensive, and it can lead to inconsistencies when national courts interpret the same patent in different ways.  The