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What do Laos and Costa Rica have in common?
They are places that, at some point soon, you’ll be able to validate a European patent.
The EPO has recently announced that a validation agreement has been signed with Costa Rica. There is, as yet, no date indicated for when the validation agreement will enter into force, but this is the first step in the process.
A European Patent can be brought into force in a number of states. There are the core member states (these are the states that are members of the European Patent Organisation, EPO); the extension states and the validation states. The EPO has indicated that as part of their Strategic Plan 2028 they are looking to enter into validation agreements with more countries going forward, so it will be interesting to see where will be next.
At present the core member states are:
Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom
Montenegro was the last to become a full member state on 1 October 2022.
Between 1993 and 2009, the EPO signed extension agreements with ten non-member states. Nine of these states are now full member states, with just a single extension state now:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Since 2010, the EPO has signed, and brought into force, validation agreements with five non-member states:
Morocco , Republic of Moldova, Tunisia, Cambodia and Georgia
In May 2024 the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and the EPO signed a validation agreement, but this has yet to come into force.
With the addition of Costa Rica to the list of soon to be available validation states this means that, in the not too distant future, a European Patent could potentially cover 47 states across 4 continents (subject to fees and formalities).
The EPO’s news item can be found here.