MEPs, in a surprise vote, decided to postpone their scrutiny on a draft EU patent law scheduled for July 2012. The reason behind this decision is the Council's last-minute wish to delete three key articles to the draft law. The European Council, however, welcomed the agreement reached by Member States on 29 June to move forward the EU patent law.

The European Parliament's vote on the European patent was postponed by a vote, requested by rapporteurs Bernhard Rapkay, and Klaus-Heiner Lehne, in response to the Council's plan to delete three key articles on Tuesday morning, just before Parliament's debate. The rapporteurs argued that this would "emasculate" the proposal.

According to MEPs, the Council had pledged on 2 December 2011 to approve the law as it then stood, provided Parliament did likewise. Mr Rapkay highlights that change it now would be a "striking break" with procedure, adding that the Council's haggling over the seat of the proposed patent court resembled an "oriental bazaar". For its part, Mr Lehne backed the postponement request, stressing that if the Council did this, the case "would go straight to the European Court of Justice".

Among the changes introduced by the Council, the leaders had to solve the last outstanding issue: the seat of the Unified Patent Court's Central Division of the Court of First Instance. They agreed that it would be based in Paris and have two specialised sections, one in London and the other in Munich. Klaus-Heiner Lehne noted that the Council's request in effect rendered the first reading null and void.