The London agreement came into force in 2008 and dramatically reduced the cost of European patent protection by providing that translations of European patents were no longer necessarily required by states party to the agreement.
The latest news is that Finland has joined the agreement with the effect that in Finland only a translation of the claims of a patent (usually a small section of the complete specification) needs to be filed with the Finnish Patent Office, provided the European Patent Application is in English.
Since Finland’s accession, which has effect from 1 November 2011, the total number of states party to the agreement is 17; nearly half of the 38 member states.
Accordingly, for any European Patent that was drafted in English and granted after 1 November 2011, no translation of the description will be required in any of the following states:
Croatia
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
Iceland
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Monaco
Netherlands
Slovenia
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
A translation of the claims into French and German remains necessary regardless of which states the European Patent is validated in (i.e. even if you are not interested in either France or Germany) and the following states still require a translation of the claims into their national language:
Croatia (Croatian)
Denmark (Danish)
Finland (Finnish)
Hungary (Hungarian)
Iceland (Icelandic)
Latvia (Latvian)
Lithuania (Lithuanian)
Netherlands (Dutch)
Sweden (Swedish)
Slovenia (Slovene)
Of course it will be appreciated that there are some significant exceptions from the list – notably Italy and Spain, which are widely regarded as Europe’s fourth and fifth largest economies (by GDP) respectively. However, it is clear that the more countries join the London Agreement, the more attractive European Patent protection will be.
If you have any questions about protecting your inventions in Europe, please do not hesitate to contact one of our European Patent Attorneys, for example, the author of this piece, Mark Jolly.