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NEWS - JANUARY 2008EPO NEWSFLASH: At present, a European patent must be translated after grant into the national language of each country in which protection is sought. As from 1 May 2008 these translation requirements are completely removed for countries party to the Agreement having one of the EPO official languages (English, French or German) as a national language (the claims of the granted European patent being available in all of English, French or German). Countries party to the Agreement not having English, French or German as a national language will only require translation of the full patent into their national language in the case that the European patent is not available in the EPO official language selected by that country. Generally a translation of the claims into the national language of these countries will be required. These measures will thus greatly reduce the translation burden on applicants. At present 12 states are party to the London Agreement: Croatia, France, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Denmark and Sweden have also signed the Agreement, but have not yet deposited their instruments of ratification. It is expected that further states will join the London Agreement following the ratification by France. The EPO press-release may be found at:
EPO NEWS: Under the new fee structure claims fees will no longer be due in respect of the 11th to 15th claims in an application. However, the amount of claims fees is increased significantly to euro 200 for the 16th and subsequent claims; representing a substantial increase in claims fees payable for applications having larger numbers of claims. Renewal fees will rise by over 20% on average, with the 5th year renewal fee rising by a staggering 56%, and the fee for the 10th and subsequent years rising by 27%. Additionally the penalty fee for late payment of renewal fees will rise from 10% of the fees due to 50%. Further fee changes will come into force on 01 April 2009. These further increases include a flat designation fee of euro 500 independent of the number of states designated, and an additional filing fee of euro 12 in respect of each page of an application over 35 pages. This new page fee at the time of filing will replace the current page fees payable at grant. Additionally claims fees will be further increased whereby the 15th to 50th claims in an application will attract a claims fee of 200 euro per claim, and the 51st and subsequent claims will be subject to a claims fee of 500 euro per claim. With these new measures the EPO aims to discourage applicants from filing applications which are unnecessarily lengthy or contain multiple inventions in a single application. For further information see: |