Patents

Your rights

A patent gives you exclusive rights over your invention for a limited period, normally 20 years. Other people cannot make, use, offer for sale, sell or import the product protected by the patent, or practice the process it protects without your permission. You can give someone else permission to use the invention through a  patent license agreement or sell the patent to someone else.

What a patent protects

Use a patent to protect your technical inventions: products or processes in any field of technology which are new, involve an inventive step and have industrial application. However, a certain number of exclusions apply in Europe. For instance, computer programmes, business methods discoveries, scientific theories, ‘methods for treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy’, as well as plant and animal varieties, are not patentable in Europe.

If you want to know if something similar to your invention has already been patented, read the European Patent Office's patent search FAQ and consult the Espacenet database.

How you register a patent

To obtain a patent, your invention must meet certain criteria, like being new and involving an inventive step. The process starts by filing one or more patent application(s) with the relevant patent office(s). The office will review your application, and based on their examination, they will decide whether to grant the patent or reject the application.

• If you need protection in only one European country, you can file a patent application at the national level by contacting the relevant national patent office.

For protection across multiple European countries, you have two main options:

• European patent: This is the traditional option. You can file a European patent application with the European Patent Office (EPO). Should a European patent be granted, you must then “validate” it with the national patent office in each country where you seek protection. Each country may have its own requirements, like translations or fees. Today, a European patent may cover up to 44 countries.
• Unitary patent: For any European patent granted on or after 1 June 2023 you can also choose the new Unitary Patent System, by requesting ‘unitary effect’ to be attributed to that patent. Today this gives you coverage in 18 EU countries (and more in the future), without any national validation requirements. You’ll also pay a single annual maintenance fee to the EPO rather than separate fees in each country. For countries not participating in the Unitary Patent System, you still need to go through the traditional validation process.
• If you wish to have protection at international level, you can file an ‘international application’ under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (a.k.a. ‘PCT application’) to seek protection in up to 158 countries. After the 30-month ‘international phase’, where you will receive feedback on your invention’s patentability, you can choose to move forward and apply for patents in the national or regional patent offices that best suit your goals.

See also

Patent protection in the EU

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