Intellectual property fights

Even the equable Finns were driven by exasperation to insist halfway through their presidency of the EU that if Europe really wanted to boost innovation, it should "finally get its incoherent patent system in order".

More than 500 years after Venice issued the first patent, intellectual property (IP) protection is in such a mess that Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish premier, was obliged to remind fellow EU leaders at the informal Lahti summit in October of the need for "a comprehensive and balanced EU-wide strategy on intellectual property rights".

This isn’t just a question of remedying last year’s embarrassing collapse of attempts to create EU rules on computer-implemented inventions. Europe is resonating with much broader expressions of concern over protracted neglect of intellectual property.

The European employers’ federation UNICE says the current regime does not do enough to foster growth and innovation. The patent system is inefficient and expensive. The European Patent Office - the closest thing so far to a one-stop shop - still leaves enforcement of hundreds of thousands of patents to national courts, leading to conflicting interpretations and legal uncertainty. And translation requirements add unnecessary costs. Smaller firms complain that they simply cannot afford to obtain and defend a patent in Europe.

Artists complain that the unmodified 50-year copyright term in Europe is too short - Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney will soon hear their early works being played without receiving so much as a penny for a song. And the digital age is leaving rights-holders, consumers and technology companies equally dissatisfied with an outdated legislative framework.

Successive European Parliament resolutions have demanded improvements. The European Commission recently admitted that "political leadership will be required to make progress on issues such as patent policy". Charlie McCreevy, the European commissioner whose internal market responsibilities put him in charge of IP, wanted a serious attempt to improve this "patchwork" of intellectual property rights. He wanted to re-jig the unloved Community patent, to engage the EU in an emerging European agreement on patent litigation and to persuade France to sign up to an agreement that would ease language requirements for patent filings in Europe But this week he gave up the attempt.

Meanwhile, fundamental assumptions about intellectual property rights are increasingly questioned - in part because of high-profile concerns over gene patents, access to AIDS treatments, trade marks for Ethiopian coffee, criminalisation of teenage downloaders, copyright infringements by Google, or Microsoft’s market position.

The Parliament has expressed anxieties about undesirable patents in sensitive fields, lack of democratic control over processes for granting rights, or abuse of dominant positions by rights-holders. BEUC, the European consumers’ organisation, openly challenges the central dogma of rights: "We certainly do not believe (and we are not sure if anyone else does believe) that current intellectual property protection regimes foster growth and innovation."

Rich western countries are accused of exploiting international rules such as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to maintain developing countries in a position of disadvantage. The rise of a worldwide internet community is shifting perceptions about how to balance the protection of innovation against serving the public interest. Even the august World Intellectual Property Organization is now engaged in intense debates on genetic resources, traditional knowledge and folklore.

This week’s Competitiveness Council repeated its invitation to the Commission to design a new EU strategy on intellectual property. Against this rapidly changing background, the brains in the Commission are going to have to demonstrate some remarkable powers of invention to come up with the right answers.

• Peter O’Donnell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.

Even the equable Finns were driven by exasperation to insist halfway through their presidency of the EU that if Europe really wanted to boost innovation, it should "finally get its incoherent patent system in order".