The European Patent Convention has proved reasonably successful in providing a means for securing relatively cheap patent protection in many countries. There have, however, been two fundamental criticisms of the present European system. One is the cost of securing enforceable national rights after the grant of a European patent mainly as a result of the costs of translation. The other is that there is still no uniformity in the enforcement of patents after grant which are still a matter of national law. It was originally expected that the latter problem would be solved by the adoption of Community Patent Convention which would have given rise to a single patent covering the whole of the EU and would have had a protocol on litigation appended to it. However, largely as a result of issues related to the costs of translations, the Community Patent Convention has never come into effect.

In the summer of 2000, the Commission of the European Union put forward its own proposals for reform of the European Patent System which would involve the joining of the EPC by the European Union as a combined entity for which a single patent might be granted. Such a patent would exist in the language in which the application had been prosecuted (i.e. English French or German) except for the claims which would have to be in English, French and German. Additionally, the Commission proposed that a new court system be set up to have jurisdiction over all patent disputes throughout Europe. Provision for the creation of such courts were made by the Amendments to the Treaty of the European Communities adopted in Nice in 2000. However, the rejection of the Treaty of Nice by Ireland in its referendum on the treaty will cause some delay in their actual creation. Furthermore, subsequent meetings of EU members have revealed continuing political difficulties with implementing these proposals.

An Intergovernmental Conference in London in October 2000 considered some of the issues involved and proposed solutions in which some, but not necessarily all, of the EU countries might agree to waive their right to translations and to set up a supranational court system for such countries that wished to adhere to it for dealing with patent litigation, again envisaging the possibility that such a system might apply to only some but not all EU Member States.