Now that 25 European countries have reached agreement on creating a single European patent, someone has to design the system that runs it. And the first question is: what should a European patent cost?
A select committee made up of representatives from the 25 European countries that signed the unitary patent treaty last month and the European Patent Office (EPO) will meet on 20 March at the EPO in Munich to begin debating that question.
“The success of the new unitary patent depends largely on our capacity in the coming months to fix an appropriate level for annual fees,” said EPO President Benoît Battistelli, in an interview with Science|Business. He expects the total administrative cost of filing and maintaining an average European unitary patent, including patent office, translation and legal fees to come down by roughly 70 per cent.
To read the original article: European Patent Office enters new era: managing the EU Unitary Patent - Science|Business
