The London Agreement Comes into Force for European Patent Applications

The London Agreement (the "Agreement"), designed to reduce the costs associated with translation of European patents, entered into force on May 1, 2008. The 14 states that have implemented the Agreement have agreed to terms that would alleviate the requirement for translation of European patents. Article 65 of the European Patent Convention ("EPC") specifies that a state can prescribe that the patent owner must provide a translation of the entire patent text for the European patent to have effect in its jurisdiction. Before the Agreement, complying with each state's Article 65 language requirement was an expensive part of the process. For example, to validate an English-language European patent in Germany, the owner had to provide a complete German translation. Likewise, to validate the patent in France, the owner also had to provide a complete French translation. The high cost of complying with each state's requirements may have also discouraged small companies from filing in Europe at all. The Agreement aims to address these concerns. The Agreement provides that states having an official language that is one of the EPC official languages (English, French and German) will waive the translation requirements of Article 65. This group includes France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. So, under the Agreement, an English-language patent does not need to be translated to be validated in Germany and France, since it is already in one of the official languages. For states that do not have English, French or German as their official language, the Agreement provides another form of translation relief. These states can agree to accept a translation into the local language of just the claims of the patent, instead of the entire specification. This applies to Croatia, Denmark, Iceland, Latvia, Netherlands, Sweden, and Slovenia. Some EPC states have not implemented the Agreement, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey. In these countries, a complete translation of the European patent specification is still required. The Agreement will have significant implications when patent owners decide where to validate a European patent. For more information see: http://www.epo.org/patents/law/legal-texts/london-agreement.html For the full text of the London Agreement see: http://tinyurl.com/55mstn Summary by: Lea Epstein