The European Patent Office (EPO) is an organ of the European Patent Organisation, an intergovernmental organisation that was set up on 7 October 1977 on the basis of the European Patent Convention (EPC) signed in Munich in 1973. The EPO is responsible for the uniform procedure to grant European patents. Once the EPO has granted a European patent, the patent holder can validate it in every single contracting state. In the future, the EPO will also be in charge of deciding on requests for unitary effect of European patents under the Unitary Patent system.
Background The story about Patrick Corcoran has been covered several times on this blog, e.g. here, here and here and other blogs, e.g. here and here. There is even a Wikipedia site about it. In a nutshell, the story is about a (previous) EPO Board of Appeal member who was suspended and banned from access…
Four leading patent law firms in Germany – Grünecker, Hoffmann Eitle, Maiwald and Vossius & Partner – have published an open letter expressing ‘great concern’ about the developments at the European Patent Office, particularly ‘the modifications to the incentive systems for the examination of patent applications’. The ‘overreaching desire for high productivity’ has led to…
The Unitary Patent (UP) package becoming a reality would be a great step forward for Europe. Intellectual property, and patents in particular, is a key ingredient in innovation systems. However, more political efforts will be needed to build a truly European system which supports innovation dynamics. And the European Patent Office (EPO) should probably be…
In one of the saga of cases that involved Societé des Produits Nestlé and companies that are trying to market capsules compatible with Nescafé’s Dolce Gusto system, the defendant alleged, among other arguments, that some of the patents asserted were null due to a lack of inventive step. The case was handled by Commercial Court…
This is the last post of my series on the EPO’s vision and the current reality, this time dealing with the issue of EPO and “trust”, including trust-building measures such as transparency, fairness and respect. Let’s begin by recalling the yardstick by which the EPO wants to be measured, its “vision”: Our vision – what…
I know that this is a patent blog. But something – I don’t know what, maybe it’s the upcoming meeting of the EPO’s Administrative Council – drives me to refer very briefly to a new CJEU ruling. Here is what the Court of Justice had to say about judicial independence in Case C-64/16. Emphases in…
Among other things, the EPO’s official vision also includes to set world-wide standards in efficiency, so let us look into this goal a bit more closely. To begin with, what is efficiency? Wikipedia defines it as follows: Efficiency is the extent to which time or effort is well used for the intended task or purpose….
Abstract This will be a very long post (sorry, dear readers!), yet it cannot and will not be comprehensive enough to cover all aspects of this topic. In summary, my take on EPO quality is that not all is bad and a lot of people are still doing a good job. However, it is presently…
What can people, in particular citizens of Munich and Bavaria, do if they feel that elementary constitutional rights are infringed, not somewhere abroad and far away, but literally next door, at the Isar river banks or in the Pschorrhöfe building? Unfortunately, this is no rhetorical question. If such things happen in the jurisdiction of German…
Part II (- sorry, this will be a bit longer, but a lot has accumulated recently…) How does the EPO in 2018 fare with regard to the criterion “expert, well supported and motivated staff”? To what extent is it already reality, and to what “vision” in the sense of fancy? In my personal view, it…
