Italy and Spain are revealed to have filed applications in June 2011 before the European Court of Justice, aiming to annul the EU Council’s Decision of 10 March 2011 authorizing cooperation among member states for the creation of unitary patent protection.
The current system allows the European Patent Office to grant patent titles, although it becomes a national patent subject to individual member rules and must be validated in each member state. The new regulations allow uniform protections for inventions and initiates translation arrangements.
The applicants against allege that the agreement was not properly approved and will affect the internal EU market adversely, claiming it will introduce “a barrier to trade between Member States and discrimination between undertakings, causing distortions of competition”.