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.
The European Patent Organisation consists of two organs: the European Patent Office and the Administrative Council. Pursuant to Art. 4 EPC, the task of the Organisation is to grant European patents. This shall be carried out by the European Patent Office supervised by the Administrative Council. Thus, the Administrative Council is supposed to supervise the…
For many years, Spanish Courts have considered the “problem & solution approach” developed by the European Patent Office (“EPO”) to be a very useful tool for the purpose of trying to make an objective assessment of inventive activity. Unlike in other jurisdictions such as Germany, in Spain this method has become the natural instrument used…
The Administrative Council (AC) of the European Patent Organisation has elected António Campinos to succeed Benoît Battistelli as President of the EPO. Campinos 5-year term will start on 1 July 2018. According to an EPO announcement, the Portuguese Campinos was elected during the AC meeting in Munich today. He is currently Executive Director of the…
When analysing inventive activity, one risk that appears to be here to stay is that of hindsight. As Richard Ebbink very aptly put it in a workshop held at the INGRES Institute in Zurich on 8 and 9 September 2017 in honour of Dr. Dieter Brändle – the first President of the Swiss Federal Patent…
Earlier this year, the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court rendered judgment in a patent case between Carl Freudenberg and Stadsing (SH2017.T-14-14S). Carl Freudenberg was the holder of a patent for a mop cover for a cleaning device (DK/EP 1 704 808). Stadsing conceded infringement if the patent-in-suit were held to be valid. Carl Freudenberg argued…
The search for a successor of Benoît Battistelli as president of the European Patent Organisation has started in full with the publication of a vacancy notice on the EPO website. It is obvious from the text that the controversial Battistelli, whose term in office ends in June 2018, has no chances to stay on. According…
The European Patent Office amends its Regulations in order to exclude from patentability plants and animals exclusively obtained by an essentially biological breeding process. The decision, during the 152st meeting of the Administrative Council of the EPO, came after years of discussion and decisions to the contrary by the Enlarged Board of Appeal in the so-called Broccoli-II…
Chairman Alexander Ramsay of the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court regrets that a constitutional complaint has led to the suspension of the German ratification process of the UPC Agreement. In a message which was published on the committee’s website today, Ramsay states: ‘In Germany another layer of complexity has been added due to…
Germany has unfortunately no Fordham conference where an impressive number of eminent IP scholars, judges and practitioners, including even representatives of the EPO, get together once every year to discuss the state of the patent universe and future developments. However, Germany does luckily at least have its Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in…
A new president of the European Patent Organisation, the person who will succeed the controversial president Benoît Battistelli in June 2018, will be chosen this autumn. That is the expectation of Martijn van Dam, Dutch secretary of state for Economic Affairs. Van Dam said this in a debate last week with parliament on the ‘deteriorating…
