The European Commission has issued a Green Paper calling for comments on the necessary steps required to improve patent protection in the European Union (EU). In particular, the Green Paper addresses the question of whether the Community Patent Convention, which would create a single EU-wide patent but which has, despite various attempts to improve it, been in limbo since it was signed in 1975, should finally be brought into effect or be replaced with something else. The paper notes two weaknesses in the present form of the Convention, namely the cost of translations and the risk that a Community Patent could be revoked by a court which has little experience with patent matters. The Green Paper suggests that the first of these problems might be approached by centralizing the need for filing of any required translations in the EPO rather than having to file translations of the granted patent in the various countries covered and that the EU could by regulation confine what needs to be translated into all languages to the claims of the patent. Other options were, however, also listed, but all seem subject to one problem or another.

On the question of revocation, the Commission suggests that the right to revoke a Community Patent could be confined to revocation boards of the EPO, subject to appeal to the EU's Court of First Instance. Such an approach would, however, tend to sever considerations of validity and infringement and has been perceived by some to be a fault in the current system used by the EPO where it is felt by some that the Boards of Appeal have given too little attention in some of their decisions as to how one is to determine what does or does not fall within a patent claim.

In other areas, the Green Paper addressed the question of whether software-related inventions are given sufficient protection in the EU, whether there needs to be harmonization of the laws relating to employee inventor's rights, and what steps should be taken to facilitate practice by patent attorneys qualified in one EU member state to function fully in other EU member states.

The period for comment on the Green Paper expired at the beginning of November and the Commission's comments on the responses is expected early in the new year.