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.
Ahead of their meeting late June, a petition calling for a conference of ministers of contracting states under Article 4a EPC has been sent to the members of the Administrative Council of the EPO. The petition is an initiative of the EPO’s trade union SUEPO, which has invited all staff members to sign it. According…
The present case relates to the admittance of a new ground for opposition which was raised during the oral proceedings before the opposition division but had deliberately not been decided upon by the opposition division. In the absence of a positive decision on admittance by the opposition division, the Board considered that the ground for…
The creation of a dedicated administrative tribunal could be a way to improve the settlement of labour disputes at the European Patent Office. Eric De Brabandere, professor of international dispute settlement at Leiden University in the Netherlands said this in an interview with Kluwer IP Law. The tensions at the EPO have risen over the…
The industrial actions at the European Patent Office, which were organised by trade union SUEPO with the support of the Central Staff Committee (CSC), go into their fourth month next week. The main reason for discontent with the EPO management is a new salary adjustment procedure which, according to SUEPO, ’causes a disastrous immediate and…
Social tensions at the European Patent Office seem to have reached new lows in a meeting last week between an ‘extremely hostile’ EPO president Antonio Campinos and staff representatives. In a letter about the event which was sent to staff members last week, the Central Staff Committee (CSC) wrote the atmosphere at a General Consultative…
The European Patent Office (EPO) received 188 600 applications in 2021, up 4.5% on the previous year and the highest number to date, according to the EPO’s Patent Index 2021. Patent filings rebounded after a slight dip in 2020. “Digital communication (+9.4% compared with 2020) narrowly overtook medical technology (+0.8%) as the field with the largest number of European…
The trade union SUEPO has claimed the strike it called for during the meeting of the Administrative Council on 22 March 2022 was a ‘striking success’. According to a statement it sent to its members two days after the strike, 1.514 employees representing 24,45% of all staff participated in the strike, including 28,63% of staff…
Members of the trade union of the European Patent Office, SUEPO, have voted for industrial action, including ‘work to rule’, ‘go slow’, and a strike on 22 March 2022 during the meeting of the Administrative Council. They SUEPO members demand the restoration of fundamental rights at the EPO and the suspension or reversal of major…
The EPO violated the fundamental right of free association of its staff in 2014 by giving (former) president Benoit Battistelli the power to determine the detailed conditions relating to the staff committee elections. The Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT) has ruled this in its judgment 4482, which was published after its 133d…
Executive version: Quite a few scholars have tried to decipher the hymn sheet shown on Elias Haussmann’s famous portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach. This blog tries to decipher the latest changes in the EPO Management just announced by the President. On a peaceful, sunny morning as we had it today I sometimes indulge in the…
