THE LONDON AGREEMENT

The costs for a European patent were reduced significantly since the London Agreement entered into force on 1 May.

The Agreement applies to all European patents, where Mention of Grant is published in the European Patent Bulletin after the Agreement has entered into force for the state concerned. For the countries mentioned below, the relevant date is 1 May. Switzerland and the UK have as the only countries enacted transitional provisions which means that the relevant date for them is 1 February 2008.

The states being party to the Agreement undertake to waive, entirely or largely depending on the language of the application, the requirement for filing translations of European patents in their national language.

Every state party to the agreement agrees to dispense with the translation of the description and the drawings into their national language. The states not having an official language of English, French or German, choose one of these languages for which the description and drawings should be available. As a number of the states have chosen English as an acceptable language, this means in practice that for most patents only the claims of the European patent are to be translated into each of the national languages of the states being party to the Agreement.

In case of a patent dispute at the national level in a state party to the Agreement, a full translation of the European patent into an official language of that state may be necessary. It is evident that the London Agreement reduces translation costs associated with European patents without impairing the legal rights in the different states.

States which have entered into the London Agreement to date are: Croatia (HR), Denmark (DK), France (FR), Germany (DE), Iceland (IS), Latvia (LV), Liechtenstein (LI), Luxembourg (LU), Monaco (MC), the Netherlands (NL), Slovenia (SI), Switzerland (CH), the United Kingdom (GB),  and Sweden (SE). You can see the status at www.epo.org