EPO’s president visited Rome last week for talks on Italy’s request to join the unitary patent: cost reductions for SMEs were discussed, but no mention of the reserves that Italian institutions are still expressing about the unitary patent’s language regime.

On 10 September 2015 the President of the European Patent Office (EPO) Benoit Battistelli met the Undersecretary of the Italian Ministry for Economic Development Simona Vicari to discuss the role of patents in supporting innovation and Italy’s recent decision to join the enhanced cooperation on the unitary patent.

According to official releases, Mr Battistelli declared that “Italy’s recent decision to join the unitary patent is very good news for Europe”, while Ms. Vicari said that “the Ministry is willing to work with other European partners and the EPO to define the operative details that will best answer the needs of our enterprises, with the aim of achieving this new European dimension”.

According to the press, discussion also touched on unitary patent fee reductions for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and on the reimbursements provided for SMEs, natural persons, not-for-profit organisations, universities and research organisations against the cost of translations borne for obtaining a unitary patent (all unitary patent procedures take place in German, French or English only). Ms Vicari demanded that the currently provided reimbursement of 500 euro be at least doubled.

The undersecretary pointed out that the Unified Patent Court fee system should also provide discounts for SMEs.

Mr Battistelli spoke in favour of Italy’s request to have a division of the Unified Patent Court in Milan, in consideration of the qualifications and experience of Italian judges as well as of the high number of manufacturing enterprises in Italy.

No reference, in reports on the meeting, is made to Italy’s position on the unitary patent’s language regime: Italy has expressed the intention to continue to demand respect of language rules set out the in EU treaties both in the official letter by which it communicated its decision to join the unitary patent, and in the motions approved by the Italian Parliament on 23 June 2015. The motions commit the government to promote multilingualism “through specific actions aimed to exclude the acceptance of the use of three languages -English, French and German- for the functioning of EU institutions and policies”.