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The London Agreement - practical impact

The European Patent Office intends to grant your patent. Almost as soon as you hear this good news, your pleasure in securing a new business asset is instantly marred by the request for instructions . In which of the many countries you blithely designated -sometimes many years ago - do you want this patent to be enforceable? and how much are you prepared to pay.

At this stage you are paying fees to each national patent office, a local agent and translation fees as well as fees to your own patent agent who is organising all this paperwork. The cost of translations has been much criticised and back in 1999 representatives of the governments of the EPO countries got together in France and put together the London Agreement in order to reduce the number of translations that need to be filed.  It came into force on 1 May 2008 because France ratified it on 29 January 2008. 

Article 65(1) of the European Patent Convention says that contracting states may require the filing of a translation of the text of the patent within three months of the grant date. It is this obligation that the Agreement sets aside.

The EPO page of Key Points also provides much useful information.

Where

Although 8 states including France, the UK and Germany had to ratify for the project to go live, the other states still have a choice .  Therefore there are three types of state. The states which will were playing when the Agreement comes into force are shown in Filemot green in the table below. On 1 January 2011, they have been joined by Hungary.

Italy and Spain are the only two of the most popular seven states that are not yet playing. Given their recent veto on the Community Patent at the 10 November 2010 European Union Competiveness Council Meeting (see press release) it is unlikely they will ever join.

Article 1(1) states are the best - ones where they use English French or German and you won't have to translate at all. Then there are Article 1(2) states which can require a particular language and may ask for the claims to be translated into their language. Finally there are states which have not ratified and where you will still have to translate the entire specification into a relevant language.

Table

This table covers all current member states.  However your patent may not designate them all depending on the filing date and the choices made when the application was filed.

Renewals

Since an English language European patent will auto-validate in several territories you may be surprised to receive overdue renewal notices from the Patent Offices of countries you are not interested in. The Swiss IPO notice in German has surprised at least one client of mine.

The EPO has a table monitoring ratifications here.

Contact me to let me know if I have errors on this page.