European patent law covers a wide range of legislations including national patent laws, the Strasbourg Convention of 1963, the European Patent Convention of 1973, and a number of European Union directives and regulations in countries which are party to the European Patent Convention.
Patents having effect in European states may be obtained either nationally, via national patent offices, or via a centralised patent prosecution process at the European Patent Office (EPO). The EPO is not a body of the European Union and the states contracting to the European Patent Convention (the legal basis for the EPO) are different from those forming the European Union. A patent granted by the EPO does not lead to a single European Union-wide patent enforceable before one single court, but rather to independent national patents enforceable by national courts according to different national legislations and procedures.
European patent law is also shaped by international agreements such as the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs Agreement) and the Patent Law Treaty (PLT).
Read more about European Patent Law: Types of Patent Protection in Europe, Differences and Similarities Between National Laws, European Union Patent
Famous quotes containing the words european, patent and/or law:
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At the end of one millennium and nine centuries of Christianity, it remains an unshakable assumption of the law in all Christian countries and of the moral judgment of Christians everywhere that if a man and a woman, entering a room together, close the door behind them, the man will come out sadder and the woman wiser.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)