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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 will come 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.

When

The first beneficiaries in the UK will be European patent holders whose patents are in French and German with a date of grant after 1 Feb 2008. The way the UK and Switzerland have implemented the London Agreement is to make the provision that requires a translation  to be filed within 3 months of the grant date cease to have effect when the Agreement comes into force on 1 May 2008.  As a result any European Patent  granted between1 February 2008 and 1 May 2008 will still be valid in UK and Switzerland even without a translation.

I am still working out how other countries have done it. See also the new EPO page of Key Points.

Where

Although 8 states including France, the UK and Germany had to ratify for the project could go live, the other states still have a choice .  Therefore there are three types of state. The states which will be playing when the Agreement comes into force are shown in Filemot green in the table below. Italy and Spain are the only two of the most popular seven states that are not yet playing.

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.

The EPO has a table monitoring ratifications here.

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