European Patent Convention
European
patent law
European Patent
Organisation
European Patent
Convention
European Union
Biotech directive
Centralization and
harmonization
Community patent
Brussels Regime
European Patent Litigation
Agreement (EPLA)
London Agreement
European Patent Convention Contracting
States in green, extension agreement states
in red from 1 January 2009
The Convention on the Grant of
European Patents of 5 October 1973, com-
monly known as the European Patent
Convention (EPC), is a multilateral treaty in-
stituting the European Patent Organisation
and providing an autonomous legal system
according to which European patents are
granted. The term European patent is used to
refer to patents granted under the European
Patent Convention. However, after grant a
European patent is not a unitary right, but a
group of essentially independent nationally-
enforceable, nationally-revocable patents, [1]
subject to central revocation or narrowing as
a group pursuant to two types of unified,
post-grant procedures: a time-limited opposi-
tion procedure, which can be initiated by any
person except the patent proprietor, and lim-
itation and revocation procedures, which can
be initiated by the patent proprietor only.
The EPC provides a legal framework for
the granting of European patents,[2] via a
single, harmonized procedure before the
European Patent Office. A single patent ap-
plication, in one language,[3] may be filed at
the European Patent Office at Munich,[4] at
its branches at The Hague[4] or Berlin[5] or at
a national patent office of a Contracting
State, if the national law of the State so per-
mits.[6] This latter provision is important in
countries such as the United Kingdom, in
which it is an offence for a UK resident to file
an overseas patent application for inventions
in certain sensitive technical areas without
obtaining clearance through the United King-
dom Intellectual Property Office first.[7]
There is currently no single, centrally en-
forceable,
European Union-wide patent.
Since the 1970s, th