France to Ratify London Agreement on Patent Language notes that France is about to ratify the evil London Agreement.
Currently, if a patentee obtains a European patent, he has to pay to have it translated into an official language of each country in which the patentee wants patent protection. Thus, at least potential patent infringers can be do research and find out what potential patent infringement suits they might someday get hit with.
But, poor patentees—! It costs a lot of money to do all those translations. Getting an anti-competitive, government-granted monopoly is just too darned expensive! The solution? The London Agreement, which will basically eliminate the requirement to translate the patent for it to be enforceable. Thus, a European patent filed in German would affect English-speaking companies in Britain. You might be running a business in the UK and unwittingly be violating a patent that is not even in the English language.
One IP blog is drooling over this: they “look[] forward to the long-awaited day when applicants will finally be able to get a European patent with decent coverage without the need to spend huge amounts of money on translations”. But as one of the commentors on the thread notes, “What about the day when applicants who wish to do an effective novelty search, or people who wish to know whether their activities are infringing an EPO patent valid in the UK, are unable to do so without going to the trouble and expense of getting complex legal documents translated into English?”
