CPR on the EU Draft SEP Regulation?

Is there still life in the proposal for an EU SEP regulation? 

In February 2025 we reported on the intention of the European Commission (EC) to withdraw its proposal for an EU SEP regulation. However, it is looking like there is still life to the proposal yet.

In an upcoming meeting on 22 May 2025 of the EC’s Competitiveness Council (Internal market and industry), it appears that ministers are to be updated on standard essential patents. This is in response to a AOB request for “the need to continue discussions on the commission's proposal for a Regulation … on standard essential patents”. 

The AOB request refers to a note from Czechia, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia and Spain. The attached note refers to a “joint position paper” of these countries, as well as Austria, Hungary and Portugal.  

The note states that “we remain committed to the goal of promoting transparency and predictability with regard to SEP and improving the SEP licencing system”. Their position is that “the most effective path to address the numerous issues with SEP licensing” is “continuing the discussions on the SEP regulation proposal”.

They call upon the Commission to “withdraw the withdrawal notice” and instead “present a further developed proposal that constructively addresses the concerns expressed by the member states so far.”

We wait to see what comes out of this discussion next week. There have been many supporters of the draft Regulation as well as many detractors (see our earlier articles on the progress of the draft Regulation). Also other solutions to “promoting transparency and predictability with regard to SEP and improving the SEP licensing system” have been proposed (e.g. see the EPO’s latest news on developing a new SDO citations dataset).  Whether resurrecting the EC's draft proposal is the way to go, we shall see.