COMMUNITY PATENT
November 1st, 2002
BY ALAN OSBORNTHE EUROPEAN Union's (EU) Council of Ministers for competitiveness has failed to agree legal proposals for setting up a so-called 'Community Patent' that would give inventors the option of obtaining a single patent legally valid throughout the EU. Germany and Portugal objected to wording in the proposed texts and succeeded in blocking the initiative to the great annoyance of the internal market commissioner Frits Bolkestein who said the Commission "cannot accept that the proposed central and specialised EU jurisdiction should be watered ...
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