ABSTRACT
The intention, expressed at the Summits in Lisbon and Feira during the
Portuguese presidency, is to have the legislation in place by the end of
next year.
brought about to a considerable extent already by the EPC. There is no
need for the grant of Community patents to be preceded by the
creation of a raft of substantial rules: they are already present in the
EPC and in the national laws of the EPC members. The UK’s Patents
Act 1977 is expressly intended to reflect the substantive law of the
EPC, so that for example whether an applicant wants to file a European
patent application or a UK one, a patent will only issue at the end of
the process if she has identified a novel, non-obvious invention that is
capable of industrial application and not on the list of excluded
matters which is identical in each piece of legislation. The European
Patent Office operates according to a different procedure from that of
the UK Patent Office, and will sometimes grant or refuse patents that
would as a matter of practice be dealt with differently in the UK office
(see, for example, [1999] SLRYB 139 on patentability of computer
programs).
