A New European Patent System Is Born

Will it be a case of going back to the future for Ireland?

On 11 December the European Parliament finally approved the Unitary Patent Regulation, a  language proposal and a plan for a Unified European Patent Court. Following ratification by each Member State it is likely that the new system will be operational from 1 January 2014 and that the first unitary patents will issue later that year.

This means that it will be possible to obtain automatic patent protection in 25 Member States,  but not in Italy or Spain who have a challenge pending before the European Court of Justice concerning the "enhanced co-operation" process used to rush the proposals through and who still remain opposed to the plan. Unitary patents will be made available in English, French and German.