Back in November 2007, I had reported on a very interesting presentation by Dr. Jens Gaster of GD Internal Market, EU Commission, Brussels, which had been hosted by the Bavarian chapter of Deutsche Vereinigung für gewerblichen Rechtsschutz und Urheberrecht (GRUR) on November 05, 2007, in the premises of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in Munich.

What had been quite exciting with regard to Mr Gaster's presentation was his optimism concerning a potential success in obtaining some sort of a political deal creating the legal basis for the EU Community Patent during the French EU Presidency from July to December 2008. Mr Gaster had expected that this Presidency will be decisive; if the French Government should fail to get the Community Patent through it will be dead maybe forever, he had argued.

So, last night at 00:00 the French EU Presidency was over, and where do we stay right now?

Contrary to some optimism earlier in 2008 and also contrary to noticeable progress concerning some details of the project, the overall result is a big failure. A superposition of a distraction of the French President, Mr Sarkozy, from this topic by the need to fight the global economic crisis plus a number of unresolved issues of the project as such might perhaps be blamed as reason for this result.

Will the EU Community Patent Project be dead forever as predicted by Mr Gaster?

Well, I am not a fortune teller. However, the outlook appears to be quite bleak:

• Last night, the torch of the EU Presidency has been handed over to the Government of the Czech Republic. They have issued a dull and formal commitment to the EU Community Patent saying

  "The Czech Presidency will actively continue its efforts to improve the patent system in Europe, in particular to make fundamental progress in the preparation of the integrated judiciary for patents and the creation of a single Community patent."

  but clearly Intellectual Property politics is not on top of the agenda of the Czech Government which, on top of all other problems, does not have a majority of their own in Parliament. Nobody knows as to whether or not Mr Mirek Topolánek, Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, will still be in office at the end of June when the EU Presidency moves on to Sweden. And the President of the Czech republic, Mr Vaclav Klaus, is an outspoken EU-sceptic who most probably will not be much supportive at all.
• The five years term of office of the current EU Commission will lapse also in June 2009. Nobody should expect any further long-term strategic initiatives from the Commission as it stands now.
• And, finally, also the European Parliament is due to be elected this year. Campaigning has just started. Definitively not a good time for pushing projects like the EU Community Patent including an EU patent litigation system.

Due to legal reasons it seems to be clear that there will be nothing like an EPLA as a stand-alone treaty without involvement of the European Community. Hence, I would not be surprised if any substantial improvements of the patent system in Europe on the level of the European Union will be delayed for long years.

However, real and potentially drastic changes of the European patent landscape might happen under the label European Patent Network (EPN) concerning the European Patent Organisation running the European Patent Office. But contrary to the fairly transparent discussions on the theatre of the European Union, these deliberations usually are kept secret until a final result has been achived.