The Geographic Coverage of European Patents Keeps Growing
Through a single European patent application filed with the European Patent Office (EPO) and undergoing a single examination process, inventors and businesses now can obtain patent protection in no less than 46 countries. This is the result of a recent agreement between the European Patent Organization and a Southeast Asian country located a long way from Europe: Laos. The geographic coverage of European patents continues to grow on a global scale and this growth shows no signs of stopping since another agreement was recently signed with Costa Rica.
The geographic coverage of European patents has always extended beyond the borders of the European Union (EU). This is due to the very nature of the European patent system which is based on an intergovernmental organization larger than the EU: the European Patent Organization. The Organization has for its executive body the European Patent Office (EPO); its purpose is to provide patent protection in its Member States by a single procedure for the grant of patents, called “European patents.” Today, the Organization has 39 Member States (compared to 27 States for the EU). European patents can thus naturally confer protection in Member States outside the EU like Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom or Türkiye.
More recently, the geographic coverage of European patents has been extended further, to countries in Asia and Africa (and, soon, in Central America).To do so, the European Patent Organization signed agreements, known as "validation agreements," with a number of countries, known as "Validation States," outside the Organization: first with Morocco in 2010, then with the Republic of Moldova, Tunisia, Cambodia, Georgia, Laos (entered into force on April 1, 2025) and Costa Rica (signed on December 13, 2024, but not yet in force).
According to these validation agreements, a European patent can be validated in the Validation States where it will have the same effect and be subject to the same national rules as a national patent. This means that the national courts of a Validation State retain exclusive competence for deciding, according to their national law, issues such as revocation or infringement of a validated European patent.
From a practical standpoint, validation fees must be paid at an early stage of prosecution to retain the right to validate the future European patent in the selected Validation State(s). More specifically, validation fees for the selected Validation States must be paid to the EPO no later than six months from the date on which the European patent bulletin mentions the publication of the European search report, or, for Euro-PCT applications, within the 31-month time limit for entering the European phase before the EPO. Validation fees may still be validly paid after these periods with a 50% surcharge within a grace period of two months. To make it simple, keep in mind that validation fees for the selected Validation States (around 200 Euros per State) should be paid to the EPO within the same time window as the examination fee. After the grant of the European patent, it becomes possible to validate the patent in the selected Validation State(s) by filing a full or partial translation of the European patent with the national patent office(s) and paying a publication fee. The renewal fees due after the grant have to be paid at a national level in the Validation States.
For now, this validation system is used only sparingly by European patent holders, with most holders seemingly reluctant to pay what should be considered to be relatively inexpensive fees. For instance, while a little more than 100,000 European patents are granted by the EPO per year, the number of European patents validated in Morocco is between 2,000 and 2,500 per year (almost half of these patents being in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology fields). However, it is worth keeping in mind that such a validation system exists, is cost effective, and can be useful, especially when some Validation States are identified early on in the process as key markets.
