Wednesday 8 June 2011

Spain and Italy challenge unitary patent

Spain and Italy have filed a complaint at the Court of Justice in Luxembourg against the proposals to bring in the unitary patent (for the European Union, minus Spain and Italy) using the ironically-named "enhanced co-operation" procedure, which seems to have nothing to do with co-operation and much to do with taking a pragmatic approach to opposition from a minority of Member States.

The Commission's hope - and the hope of many others too, including my Spanish friends whom I quoted on this blog a week or so ago - was that Spain and Italy would see a way to waive their objections, which are based on the omission of their languages from the list of official languages of the proposed system (a traditional reason for opposing supranational legislation in the intellectual property field). No doubt there is a great deal of horse-trading still to be done, but evidently they are not yet ready to back down.

No comments:

 

blogger templates | Make Money Online