Germany approves the European unitary patent
The constitutional court rejected the lawsuits against the project due to the absence of hard evidence
The German Constitutional Court gave the green light to the European unitary patent after rejecting constitutional complaints against the project, which had slowed down the approval of the initiative in Germany.
The judicial entity determined that the plaintiffs did not sufficiently demonstrate that their fundamental rights were violated, therefore it dismissed the complaints.
The objective of the European Union (EU) unitary patent is to reduce the time and cost of registering an invention by allowing each patent applicant to file a single application for a unitary effect in a centralized way, without the need to validate it in each country of the block.
The EU unitary patent is expected to reduce the cost of registering an invention by as much as 32,000 euros ($ 39,000), according to figures from the European Commission.
Now there is nothing to prevent the President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, from promulgating the law approving the European unitary patent, which has already been approved by the Bundestag and the Bundesrat (Lower House and Upper House of Parliament, respectively) at the end of 2020.
With the unblocking of the project by Germany, which did not grant its consent for years due to unconstitutional appeals preceding the complaints dismissed today, the establishment of the Unified Patent Court, whose headquarters will be in Luxembourg, can proceed.
Source: dpa
