The European Parliament will vote on July 4th 2012 for a regulation on the unitary patent [4].
The current text, as agreed in December 2011 by the Commission, the Council and the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament, amounts for the European Union (EU) to waive its powers to define a patent policy for the benefit of the European Patent Office (EPO), which is not an EU body and whose governance has been highly criticised, specially with regard to its practice of granting software patents, against the letter and the spirit of European patent law.
Moreover, the implementation of this shift of powers is based on a legal architecture which raises strong doubts about its compliance with the EU treaties. Therefore, the proposal, if voted without substantial changes is likely to be nullified by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
We are proposing a set of amendments aiming to bring a legal certainty to the regulation and to fix the political issue of the governance of the European patent system.
You can help by calling Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) in order for them to table these amendments before Wednesday June 27th, 12:00.
How to act ?