Patent Registration in Europe
Contrary to a fairly common perception, patent registration is not a one-time process where once it’s completed, the inventor receives full protection for their intellectual property. Patent registration is a state procedure and as such, any protection granted to your intellectual property is granted to you in the same country where you registered the patent. In all other countries, even though you’ll have grounds to sue imitations and infringements under intellectual property laws, you won’t have the protection that a registered patent provides you. On the other hand, the patent registration process is not a cheap process, and therefore it’s very important to carefully examine which countries are most important to you and accordingly perform patent registration in all those countries.
Patent Registration in Europe – Is it Possible?
Assuming you’ve reached the conclusion that there’s great importance in protecting your intellectual property in certain European countries, you have two options before you. First, you can register the patent in those individual countries, sometimes a single individual country, where in your assessment there’s great importance to complete the process. For example, if Germany is a country of strategic importance to your intellectual property, you can perform Germany patent registration only. Second, you have the option to perform registration in European Union countries within the framework of one procedure, which is indeed more expensive than registration in a single country, but sometimes more worthwhile. Moreover, in the registration process, you can choose between registration in all expanded European Union countries or in the Union’s core countries only.
England Patent Registration or All of Europe?
Patent registration in the European Union has another advantage, and this is the language advantage. In every foreign patent registration process, you must translate all patent content to the local language, so if you want, for example, to perform Germany patent registration, you’ll need to finance full translation and full adaptation of registration details, both to German language and to German registration rules. In contrast, in patent registration in the entire Union, you can submit the patent in English language, with specific adaptations. At a later stage, there are parts requiring translation to several languages, such as the claims chapter. In the case of England patent registration, the translation issue indeed becomes irrelevant, but the economic consideration of registration in one country versus registration in an entire continent still remains. Each case must be examined on its merits, but there are countries that will require translation at a later stage after European examiner acceptance, and there are countries that won’t.
Do You Need to Perform Registration in Other Countries?
In a utopian world, the answer would be yes unequivocally, but in the real world, each such registration process can cost you many thousands of dollars or euros. Because of this, you must determine which countries where infringement of your patent would have a serious impact on your business activity around it. Every country where you’re expected to conduct business activity around the patent, and every country where infringement of your patent can ultimately permeate to the entire world, is a country where you want to create protection for your intellectual property, and Europe is definitely an important continent in this aspect.
Av Tipus company has accompanied for many years entrepreneurs and inventors making an effort to protect their intellectual property and translate it to economic value. This includes the company specializing in formulation and management from the idea stage by technical team and consulting patent attorneys in various fields in development, patent registration, including registration in foreign countries and formulation of registration strategy according to important target countries. For additional information about Av Tipus services and scheduling an introductory meeting, contact us today at 03-9711011 and we’ll be happy to help with any question and matter.