Patentul comunitar si libertatea de circulatie a persoanelor in Uniunea Europeana - The Community Patent and the Free Movement of Persons in the European Union

The theory of the exhaustion of rights, with general applicability in what concerns the intellectual property rights, implies that the patent holder loses a part of his prerogatives as an inventor as a result of the exhaustion of his right,from the moment the object of its patented invention is marketed by him or with his approval. But the approach to the exhaustion of rights in the Member-States of the European Union has been a danger to the good operation of the single market. However, the regulation, at the Community level, of the exhaustion of rights theory has solved this difficulty as well.The implementation of patents in the Member-States of the European Union – as long as the novelty conditions of the invention, of an inventive activity, are fulfilled and it is susceptible of having an industrial application – is an acknowledgement of the importance of the research, development and innovation sector at the level of the European Union both from the perspective of the material benefits as well as from that of the acknowledgement and guarantee of the right to renown and reputation of the inventor. The distinction between the three types of patents regulated at the levelof the Member-States of the European Union is made at the level of the legal protection, of the costs and of the possibilities of resolution of disputes that may arise from the exercise of the rights given to the patent beneficiaries. A comparison between the present European patent and the patents in the USA or Japan, from the point of view of costs, makes clear the excessive costs of obtaining a European patent (as high as eight times the cost in Japan, for example). The solution identified by the European legislator was to establish the Community patent. The preservation of the role of the European Patent Office (the same institution involved in the European patenting process) is combined with the accessibility of patenting costs for the patent applicants (especially for small and medium enterprises for whom they are intended), with the establishment of a single, unitary set of procedural rules and with a unitary and compulsory legal interpretation in the entire European Union, meant to lower the cost of the Community patent to half the cost of the European patent.