The Competitiveness Council meeting in Brussels on 10 March 10 has given finally its approval for 25 member states to continue with the process of enhanced cooperation to implement the unitary patent protection. Despite protests from Spanish and Italian delegations and, although it seemed that the debate could be relaunched by the recent ruling from EU Court of Justice on the European and Community Court for patent, ministers agreed to continue the process.

The use of an enhanced cooperation was requested by 25 out of 27 EU member states in order to establish a single patent that will be valid across the territory of the participating member states, once it turned out that no agreement would be possible within the Council. Further to this request, the European Parliament gave its consent for using this procedure on 15 February.

During the debate within the Council, Spanish and Italian delegations expressed once again their disagreement with this process and announced the possibility to present the case to the Courtt of Justice of the European Union. The main obstacle to agreeing by unanimity on the creation of an EU patent is the number of languages in which the future unitary patent will be valid, hence the recourse to the enhanced cooperation.

The language regime for the future unitary patent system would be based on the language regime of the European Patent Office (EPO), where the official languages are English, French and German. The already existing European patent requires validation of the granted patent separately in each and every EPO member state, as well as a full translation of the patent in the official language(s) of that member state.

Following Council's approval, the future unitary patent would be automatically valid throughout the territory of the EU member states participating in the enhanced cooperation in the (EPO) language in which it has been granted. Furthermore, the enhanced cooperation would remain open for non-participating countries, and access to the unitary patent on the territory of participating Member States would also be available to businesses from non-participating Member States.

Once this point is reached, Commission is expected to submit two proposal on EU patent by 30 March.