Andrew Duff Says Patent Court Deal Best On Offer

In advance of the European Council decision tomorrow on the patent court system for common EU patents, Andrew Duff, Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England, is calling for an immediate end to the dispute over where the court should be located.

Andrew Duff says: "The row over where the patent court should be based is childish. Ideally, the patent lawyers should be as close as possible to where the inventors of patents are. So the proposal on the table of the heads of government is fairly sensible: patents for life sciences close to Cambridge in London; engineering in Munich close to the German automotive industry. The choice of Paris as the headquarters for patent court administration is a costly irrelevance - but a price that apparently has to be paid to achieve one of the EU's inglorious compromises.

"Agreement on an EU patent has been held up for more than a decade by linguistic quarrels. We must not prolong this block by geographic jealousy. The interests of British-based science will be well served by reaching agreement on this controversial dossier tomorrow."