Plans to use the enhanced co-operation procedure to create a unitary patent system in the EU, as requested by 12 Member States last year, were approved by the Legal Affairs Committee on 27 January. If Parliament as a whole and Council authorise this use of enhanced cooperation, the Commission will have to table two legislative proposals: one on the language regime and the other establishing the single patent.

The Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee gave its consent to the use of enhanced cooperation to create unitary patent protection in a report by Klaus-Heiner Lehne, which was approved by a large majority.

Competitiveness Council meeting on November discussed over the possibility to initiate future industry policy and considers enhanced cooperation to EU patent system. After that, the request by 12 Member States (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK) to start an enhanced cooperation procedure came in December 2010, after the Member States concluded that no EU-wide agreement on the issue could be found within the Council. Other Member States may join the enhanced cooperation at any time. Italian and Spanish delegations strongly opposed the idea of taking this path.

The European Parliament as a whole will vote on the proposal during the February Strasbourg session and the Competitiveness Council will examine it on 10 March. If the enhanced cooperation is authorised by both Parliament and the Council, the Commission will present two proposals: one on the language regime (consultation procedure) and the other establishing the single patent (co-decision procedure). The Legal Affairs Committee is calling on the Council to use co-decision procedure for both proposals.

A Single Patent for a Single Market

Currently, national patents coexist with a European patent system so that in this regime, inventors must choose the countries where they wish to protect their products. This system also empowers member States to impose additional requirements for patentability in their respective territories, such as the translation of the patent to the country's official language. Member States have been trying to agree on a unitary patent system for years but all their efforts to achieve unanimity, including those based on Commission proposals in 2000, 2009 and 2010, have failed. Language issues have proven to be especially problematic.

The unitary patent system aims to make it cheaper and easier for inventors to seek EU-wide patent protection, ensure equal access to all inventors within the EU, help to tackle infringements, and improve conditions for innovative businesses by removing patent rights "borders" among Member States.