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Second morning (19 April 2007)
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European Commission Vice-President Günter Verheugen said he expected the European Community patent would become reality “in the next five years” on Thursday.
While acknowledging that this was an optimistic scenario, he vowed to put political pressure on those responsible for blocking a speedy reform of the European patent system.
Speaking at the second day of the European Patent Forum, Verheugen said Europe should also create an EU-wide patent litigation institution and drive down the high costs connected with the patent procedure.
A European patent for 13 countries is “11 times more expensive than a patent in the United States,” Verheugen said. “That’s not right.”
He added that 99 per cent of Europe’s companies are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with rather few employees. “For these firms, patent costs play a large role.”
Siding in his speech with German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who spoke at the forum Wednesday), Verheugen said with a European community patent and lower prices “the market for European patents could be 50 per cent larger.”
The forum, jointly organised by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Commission, is a two-day conference at the EPO’s Munich headquarters that brings together politicians, industry leaders and some of the most renowned experts from the IP world.
The EPO presented the results of its “Scenarios for the Future” study, a three-year project that looked at four different ways how the patent system could evolve until 2025, for the first time on Wednesday.
A panel of experts debated the scenarios and their implications Thursday morning. James Love, head of the US-based Knowledge Ecology International, proposed a visionary way to reform the pharmaceutical IP system by creating a system in which the inventor of a medicine is paid by a fund according to the success of his or her drug, while at the same time allowing a competitor to sell the generic at cheaper market prices.
A heated debate centred around the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS agreement and the question of whether it increased technology transfers to developing countries.
Before the panel discussion, Rafael Ramirez, Barbara Heinzen, Shirin Elahi and Marc Thompson presented the results of Wednesday’s breakout sessions, where conference participants discussed the feasibility of each future scenario and proposed how they might be positively influenced.
EPO President-elect Alison Brimelow vowed to “engage very vigorously” with the findings of the “Scenarios” and promised to follow up on them during her time in office. The EPO “has to be part of writing the future (of the IP system),” she said.
The European Commission’s PATINNOVA 07 also started on Thursday. The conference aims to raise awareness of Intellectual Property Rights issues with a particular focus on SMEs.