The agreement on unified patent jurisdiction was signed in Brussels and thus the final stage of the five-decade long process aimed at establishing a unified European patent system has been completed, for the time being with the participation of 25 countries.
The Unified Patent Court will be headquartered in Paris, however, actual litigation will take place in Munich regarding technical patents and in London concerning pharmaceutical issues.
After the signing ceremony Minister of State Zoltán Cséfalvay pointed out that the Hungarian EU presidency in 2011 played a key role in establishing the unified patent system, as two milestones of the process – the decision on European patents and the adoption of the language regime – took place during that period.
As Minister of State Cséfalvay highlighted, this may also be the reason why the document states that the education and further training center of patent judges shall be in Budapest. Thus after the European Innovation Center it will be the second EU institution in Budapest.
As the Minister of State said, the first patents are expected to be registered in accordance with the new system at the beginning the April next year. Obtaining this new European patent will be simpler and less costly, he added. According to data mentioned by the Minister of State, having a patent registered costs the equivalent of about 2000 EUR in the United States of America, while in Europe this amount is 36 thousand EUR. In the new system expenses in Europe will decrease to 5000 EUR.
Zoltán Cséfalvay also mentioned that nowadays the issues of European re-industrialization and the need for improving competitiveness are widely debated. In his opinion the new patenting process may fortify European competitiveness world-wide.
As the Hungarian Minister of State informed, at the meeting of top government officials responsible for competitiveness the issue of the planned reform of state subsidies was also discussed. As far as this topic is concerned, the European Commission proposes – backed primarily by Scandinavian countries – that state subsidies for large enterprises operating in the most developed regions shall be abolished as of next year.
Germany, France as well as Hungary and other Central-Eastern European countries, however, are against that. They argue that investments of large companies have a knock-on effect on small- and medium-sized enterprises.
The executive body of the EU for proposing and implementing legislation, the Commission in Brussels, currently tends to allow subsidies for large enterprise to continue provided these promote objectives regarding R&D, energy efficiency and environmental protection. Zoltán Cséfalvay said that further negotiations are expected in this field.
Speaking to Hungarian journalists the Minister of State at the Ministry for National Economy added that the Government decided that in the fiscal period 2014-2020 the 60 percent of cohesion funds for Hungary will be directly spent on economic development, that is, on strengthening enterprises and stimulating economic growth. In the current seven-year period the corresponding figure was 16 percent. He listed among prioritized objectives the assistance of R&D, innovation and small- and medium-sized enterprises, the development of info-communication technology and the stimulation of employment growth.
He also said that in the new fiscal period the supervision of cohesion programmes will be assigned to ministries in order to established harmony between relevant policies and execution. The ongoing programmes of the current period, however, will continue to be managed by the existing system.
(Ministry for National Economy)
