Although Italian and Spanish MEPs tried to push for the European Parliament not granting its consent for a common EU patent system to be created using the enhanced cooperation procedure, the Chamber has finally given its approval. The Plenary voted in favour of the proposal which now has to be also approved by the Council. Further to it, the European Commission will put forward two proposals, one for the language regime and another for establishing the single patent.

In December 2010, twelve Member States made a request to launch an enhanced cooperation procedure on EU patent, as it turned out during an open session of the Competitiveness Council that an agreement between all Members states was not going to be reached. Further to this decision, other Member states, excepting Italy and Spain, decided to join the enhanced cooperation.

Now, after examining the proposal, Parliament has given its backing for the procedure on enganced cooperation for EU patent to go ahead by 471 in favour to 160 against, and 42 abstentions. This voting therefore paves the way to continue with the procedure as recommended by Parliament's rapporteur Klaus-Heiner Lehne.

From now on, the European Council will also have to give its go-ahead to the proposal at the Competitiveness Council on 10 March and, once the procedure would authorized, the European Commission will then submit two legislative proposals: one establishing the single patent (under the co-decision procedure) and the other on the language regime (consultation procedure). Regarding the procedure to be used, MEPs called on the Council to use the co-decision procedure for both proposals.

The biggest obstacle for the implementation of a single EU patent across the Union has focused on one of the procedural aspects which relates to the language regime of the single patent. The proposal envisages a simplified system using only the three official languages of the European Patent Office (EPO), namely German, English and French. This provoked the opposition of Spain and Italy, due to the exclusion of their respective languages in the regime.

This new unitary patent system, abolishing differences between Member States over patent rights, aims to make it easier and cheaper for inventors to protect their patents throughout the EU, help tackle infringements and create a level playing field for Europe's innovative businesses.