A Mediterranean revolt against the EU-wide patent

A few years ago I worked as a reporter covering intellectual property investment - essentially venture capital firms investing in new inventions and forming start-up companies around them. It was an interesting gig, but when I moved to London to start the job I knew nothing, and I mean nothing, about intellectual property. So it was a steep learning curve. I remember one of the things I was very surprised by when I started learning about how to protect intellectual property in Europe was the fact that, despite the existence of a European Patent Office in Munich, there is no such thing as a Europe-wide patent.

It struck me as rather strange. Of all the things the European Union could do well, it would seem that organising Europe-wide intellectual property protection would be high on the list. After all, it's a common market for products, shouldn't it be a common market for ideas?

But the reality is that though Brussels has tried time and time again, there still is no European patent - only individual patents for each member state. So if a company wants to patent its technology, product or idea throughout the European common market, it must undertake the arduous task of applying for a patent in each of the 27 member states. Each state has a different system, which involves a lot of work. And of course each state charges a high fee, resulting in a high financial cost for companies and researchers.