Excessively high patent fees could damage European business, the EU industry chief has warned, saying the focus should be on helping start-ups and small companies rather than raking in revenues to top up budgets.
The comments by European Internal Market and Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska came after EU officials said most member states were poised to recommend fees significantly higher than those proposed by the European Patent Office.
After decades of argument, the 28-country bloc agreed on a single European patent three years ago to replace a fragmented system where an inventor would have to pay as much as 35,000 euros (US$39,000) to protect an idea in individual EU countries.
The second leg of the process involves member states agreeing on appropriate pan-EU fees, half of which will go to national patent offices and the other half to the European Patent Office. Patents give exclusive rights or protection to inventions.
"An important factor of the EU’s competitiveness is at stake and it is the political responsibility of us all to ensure that the right decision is taken," Bienkowska wrote in a letter sent this week to British Intellectual Property Minister Lucy Neville Rolfe and other EU ministers.
"Our overarching objective should therefore consist of ensuring the adoption of renewal fees that offer the best possible access of small entities, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups in particular, to unitary patent protection," she said in the letter seen by Reuters.