European Commission cheated Unitary Patent’s Impact Assessment to hide its high costs for SMEs

Brussels, 17th June 2021 — FFII has received a testimony that the European Commission has recycled an old Impact Assessment (IA) of the Unified Patent Court (UPC), in order to hide the controversial self-financed aspect of the Court, which is why the Court is too expensive for SMEs. Countries are ratifying this dangerous treaty without any real Impact Assessment of the new Court system which will exclude most SMEs with its super high costs. The Impact Assessment was recycled from old treaty project of 2009, the UPLS, with lots of changes in the meantime, similar to what happened recently with the recycling of the Impact Assessment of the Mercosur treaty.

During the ratification of the UPC in Germany, the German Liberals (FDP) asked a series of questions about the UPC and SMEs, mentioning that the European Commission recognized that there was no Impact Assessment for SMEs:

FDP: How has the government concluded that the European patent reform is beneficial to SMEs, in view of the risks for SMEs which the European Commission has admitted and the lack of a cost-benefit analysis ?

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