BRUSSELS:More than three decades of wrangling over how to introduce an EU-wide patent could be settled within one to three years, the head of Europe's patent watchdog said last week.

A one-stop shop patent system would help narrow the innovation lead of Japan and the US, where it can be 10 times cheaper to protect such rights, the European Commission has said.

Alain Pompidou (right), president of the European Patents Office, estimated it would take between one to three more years to resolve differences among EU countries and launch so-called community patents, first mooted in 1975.

Ratification of an agreement, called the London Protocol, to use English, French and

German as the only official languages for patents in the EU, would pave the way. "If this is the case and that is endorsed by some member states . . . I think it will not be too difficult to handle the community patent," he said.

The number of languages that can be used for patents in the EU has been a sticking point as the cost of translation into the bloc's 23 official languages is expensive and there can be questions of the legal certainty of translations.

Pompidou said he expected France would sign the protocol this year. It could yet take between three and five years for the introduction of the so-called European Patent Litigation Agreement, including some countries outside the EU, for harmonised patent laws and a new patent court, he said.