The European patent convention provides a legal framework for the granting of European patents, via a single, harmonized procedure before the European Patent Office. A single patent application in one language, may be filed at the European Patent Office at Munich, at its branches at The Hague or Berlin at a national patent office of a Contracting State, if the national law of the State so permits.

European patent applications may be filed in any official language of an EPC contracting state but patent applications are prosecuted in the three official languages of the EPO – English, French and German (if an application is filed in a language other than the official languages, a translation must be filed into one of the three. The filing fee is reduced to offset the additional cost of the translation). The official language of filing (or of the translation) is adopted as the “language of proceedings” and is used by the EPO for communications.

The European Patent Organization (EPO) is continuing to grant thousands of monopolies on “computer-implemented” algorithms and business methods every year.

A European patent is also non-unitary in that it may be revoked in one Contracting State while maintained in another. However, a national court in one Contracting State may not revoke a European patent in another Contracting State.