EU patent system gets final sign-off

The final piece of a single patent system for the EU was signed into place in Brussels by Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton, cutting the cost of registering patents from €36,000 to €5,000.

For 30 years member states have been battling to reach agreement on having a single patent and those wishing to protect their inventions have had to deal with the rules and courts of the EU countries.

However, the final vestiges of the most serious row — over which language patents needed to be written in — remain in two countries that excluded themselves from the system: Spain and Italy.