If you are going to apply for a European patent for your invention, you will surely hear the term ‘validation’. What is a validation of a patent and when it shall be done?
Validation is a term used for European patents. A European patent, after it is granted by the European Patent Office (EPO), is somehow “suspended in a vacuum”: as a general rule, it is not valid in any of the 38 states – parties to the European Patent Convention (EPC). To make this patent valid in a given country, within a maximum of three months from the date of publication of the patent grant notice (Publication B1), this patent must be validated in the selected country. This procedure is not complicated.