Contact
blog
IP2Innovate

IP2Innovate welcomes Draghi’s call to improve the pipeline from innovation to commercialization

IP2Innovate welcomes the report on EU competitiveness by Mario Draghi published yesterday, and in particular its emphasis on improving innovation.

The in-depth report cements competitiveness and boosting European productivity at the heart of the EU’s political agenda. It calls for Europe to improve the pipeline from innovation to commercialisation.

IP2Innovate fully agrees. One way to do that is to address the lack of proportionality considerations in patent litigation in European patent courts. Instead of granting remedies on the basis of a proportionality assessment, the default, automatic remedy is an injunction, even when the patent involves only a minor feature of a complex product.

This makes it far too easy for opportunistic patent assertion entities (PAEs) to sue productive businesses. It’s very profitable to PAEs but does nothing for the innovation process except penalise innovators and clog it up. This funnels money away from the development of new products in Europe, instead going to pay outsized legal settlements that often go far beyond what the PAE’s patent is worth.

Last year the European Commission launched a study to look at whether proportionality is being applied in Europe as well as looking into the presence and impact of PAEs in Europe.

In spring this year IP2Innovate called for the Commission to adjust the IP Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED) in order to ensure proportionality is applied in an effective and meaningful way.

“With this new impetus from Mr Draghi we hope the European Commission will adapt the IPRED with targeted revisions that make proportionality the norm,” said Patrick Oliver, executive director of IP2Innovate.

A key aim of the Draghi report is to address issues that are holding back European competitiveness and productivity. Europe lags its key trading partners in both respects.

The US has addressed the patents issue through a Supreme Court ruling in the 2006 eBay Vs MercExchange case, which made sure courts evaluated the facts of a case before issuing a remedy. As a result it is no longer automatic for a PAE to win an injunction from a judge in the US.

“The same needs to happen in Europe. More balance in the patent system is needed to increase innovation and the take up of new technologies necessary to narrow the productivity gap between Europe and its trading partners,” Mr Oliver said.

Share

Other blogs

Patrick Oliver

Patent abuse hurts European SMEs and undermines the knowledge transfer process

This year World Intellectual Property Day focuses on SMEs. As the two examples below show, patents can be an SME’s worst enemy, as well as their best friend. Abuse by patent assertion entities is a serious and growing threat in Europe, especially to small and mid-size innovative firms. The gaming of the European patent system must stop.
IP2Innovate

New academic paper calls for targeted reforms of the IP rights enforcement directive to boost European competitiveness

A new academic paper titled Realizing the potential of proportionality in patent enforcement A case for amending IPRED by professor Rafal Sikorski from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland makes a convincing case for making targeted amendments to the IP rights enforcement directive (IPRED). IP2Innovate spoke to him and asked why IPRED reform is so important for European competitiveness? Here’s what he said: “We are aware that patent enforcement, especially injunctive relief, can be leveraged by patent holders to obtain excessive royalties. Users innovate with their products but find there may be a patent in a small part of the product, one that may even have come from a component supplied by a third party. This is frequently the case with complex tech products. Clearing up these patent issues is both time consuming and costly and in some cases – that is when patent applications have just been filed by patent holders but not yet published – simply impossible”. Professor Sikorski said. “This impacts competitiveness because it can result in products being removed from the market. The injunction creates a barrier to entry and that stifles competition It deprives the market of competition, and it denies consumers the ability to buy these products. “Products have been barred from sale in Europe due to patent disputes. It has happened in the mobile phone sector, laptops, cars. Even a temporary injunction has a very negative effect on a firm’s business. “Mario Draghi’s report on how to restore European competitiveness has been interpreted by some patent owners as a call for strengthening patent enforcement. However, I would argue that Europe must have a more flexible system. Ensuring healthy innovation and competitiveness requires more than just rigid enforcement. It also needs flexibility to address concerns in individual cases.”
IP2Innovate

Prof. Alain Strowel: IP law professor with a grounding in philosophy

Professor Alain Strowel’s academic curiosity was first sparked by philosophy. At 18 he went to the universities he would later work for as a law professor, the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels and the UCLouvain.
 Back to overview

Subscribe to our newsletter

Privacy policy

© IP2Innovate 2025 - Website door Two Impress