On November 8, Mr. Claude Jacobson and Mr. Damien Colombié, French Industrial Property Attorney and European Patent Attorney, came to visit our firm and offered a presentation on the topic of Strategies for protecting inventions in EU. They introduced the three main routes for the patent protection in EU, i.e., European patent, national standard patent and utility model systems. They noted particularly that some countries such as France cannot be directly reached by the PCT route, in which EP phase is necessary.

They also listed several criteria to take into account when consider case per case the protection strategies. Also an example analysis of the combination of the application both in France and Germany was demonstrated to . They further made a brief introduction of the patent litigation system in EU, pointing out that a unitary court based in France might be coming soon, so that the local litigation service will have an advantage concerning the cost.

The presentation was a big success, where many patent attorneys from our firm participated in the seminar and subsequent discussion. The seminar has broadened the views of Chinese practitioners with respect to the strategies for European patents protection.