The Research In New European Patent System

Europe is the birthplace of the patent system, but also a pioneer unified European patentsystem. Each country of Europe has created the patent law and the patent system, theapplicant may apply to obtain a patent in any European country in order to gain the patentprotection from that country. However, with the strengthening of national economic andtechnological exchanges, the problem caused by regional patent become more serious,andeven become a major obstacle to economic development in each country. The fragmentedsituation on patent issues also conflict with the trend of European regionalization.To solve theproblems arising from it, people began to try to coordinate and harmonize European patentsystem, and achieved some results, for example adopting the " European Patent Convention" in1973," European Community Patent Convention,"in1975,and "1989Agreement ", andestablishing the European Patent Office. Unfortunately, these efforts have not completelysolve the core problem brought by regional patent system in Europe.Until2012it made aqualitative leap. On December11,2012," European patent package" was finally passed andsigned into law on February19,2013, which meaned that the new unified European patentsystem built. In this system, the applicant wants to obtain patent protection in Europe, he cansimply submit a copy of patent application to the European Patent Office and obtain patentprotection in multiple countries within the EU as needed. It was "a historic decision" to bringEuropean patent a historic change, which would not only promote technological innovationand economic growth in the EU member states and the world but also possibly break thesituation that U.S. and Japan dominated the world patent market, meanwhile madecontribution to the history of world patent development.This paper discusses the new European patent system from five parts:The first section describes the contents of the new European patent system. The newEuropean patent system formed with the passing of " European patent package", the planincludes three aspects: a unitary patent, language regime and unified patent court,corresponding to three documents " Harmonization of Patent Protection Rules,"" LanguageTranslation Rules,"" Unified Patent Court Agreement,"which encompasses the entirecontents of the new European patent system.The second part describes the main features of the new European patent system inlegislation. From different perspective, the legislative purpose of the new European patent system is different.From the current point of view there is a realistic aim.However, from theview of tracing its basement, it has fundamental purpose and the two purposes are mutuallyconsistent; the characteristics of the new European patent system mainly are as follows:saving time and the costs and improving the stability and consistency of the Europeanregional patent protection, encouraging innovation;the new European patent system can beregarded clearly as overcoming the shortcomings of traditional European patent system.The third part introduces and analyzes the historical development of the new Europeanpatent system. This section describes development process of the patent system fromcoordination to unification, and can mainly be divided into three stages: infancy, sprint stage,the mature stage.The fourth part focuses on the analysis of how new European patent system can finallyformed. The new European patent system is a product of compromise of different sovereignstates with different languages,different cultures, different nationalities and the compromiseon this type of history is never more common. Yet this time it is successful, the reasonshould be the result of the rational choice of each sovereign state prompted by a variety ofmotives. Writer believes that these motives mainly includes three aspects: the urgent needfor the EU and the requirements of the economic development of member states, theEuropean political integration driven by ambition, the development trend of the patent systemitself raised.The fifth part analyzes the impact and inspiration of new European patent system. Thetraditional patent system is a strictly regional, and the new European patent system broke therefrain, which will form a strong impact on the traditional patent system; new Europeanpatent system is formed under the European economic and political pressure, it is in responseto the economic development and political coordination in Europe, but it may have a negativeimpact; for China, on the one hand the existence of mainland, Hong Kong, Macau andTaiwan four different jurisdictions, we can learn to build our own patent system,on the otherhand the evolution of the European patent system and its motivation are also worth our deepthinking;through accurate and timely adjustment of the patent system of our country,Chinacan better serve the changing technology and the rapid development of economic.