The European Parliament will vote on July 4th 2012 for a regulation
on the unitary patent.
The current text, as agreed in December 2011 by the Commission, the Council and the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) of the European Parliament, amounts for the European Union (EU) to waive its powers to define a patent policy for the benefit of the European Patent Office (EPO), which is not an EU body and whose governance has been highly criticised, specially with regard to its practice of granting software patents, against the letter and the spirit of European patent law.