As known, last december 11th the EU Parliament, after over 30 years of talks, approved the Unitary Patent, a new regime that will allow to get patent protection among 25 EU Countries, excluded Italy and Spain, through a unique filing procedure.
he new patent will be cheaper and in the same time more effective than current systems in protecting the inventions. According to European Commission the first applications should be filed in 2014 and they may cost just € 4.725,00, compared to an average of € 36.000,00 needed today.
Unlike the European Patent, Unitary Patent doesn’t require a specific designation of States and doesn’t need to be validated in each Country and translated into the referred language. Applications will have to be made in English, German or French. If made in another language, they will have to be accompanied by a translation into one of these three languages.