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.
It is becoming clear that videoconferencing is inevitable in the long term for all oral proceedings at the EPO. The next generation of users of the system will expect a remote, distributed and technology-based process as a matter of course and, as indicated by the EPO’s recent Progress Report, the technology supports adoption of ViCo…
The Central Staff Committee of the European Patent Office and the trade union SUEPO have called for a strike on Tuesday 15 December 2020 during the meeting of the Administrative Council. SUEPO has announced the strike will be the start of a year of social conflict to defend the future of the Staff and their…
Parties should not be forced to accept oral proceedings via videoconference before the EPO Board of Appeals. That is the clear feedback, at least in the responses that have been published, on the EPO’s user consultation regarding a proposed new Article 15a RPBA concerning oral proceedings by videoconference. The consultation closed on 27 November. In…
The IP Law of Turkey prohibits any kind of amendment/limitation of claims or patent documents after the patent has been granted. The only exceptions to this rule are the amendment/limitations made by the patentee during the national post-grant opposition phase, which was introduced to Turkish law in 2017. As per the introduction of a national…
Let’s start with a bit of etymology today. The official translation of “European Patent Office” into German is “Europäisches Patentamt”, the latter obviously being a composite of Patent and Amt.The German word “Amt” is derived from medieval German “ambt” or “ambahte“, which means servant. That is, the prime function of an Amt is to serve…
In Germany the re-ratification process of the Unified Patent Court Agreement – which is necessary after the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) partially upheld a complaint last March and declared the first ratification procedure invalid – is progressing rapidly. The decisive reading in the Bundestag, which will make clear whether the UPCA gets support from the…
Searching the EPO’s website for the terms “user-friendly” and/or “user friendliness” will result in your screen being flooded by hits describing the remarkable achievements and ongoing efforts by the EPO to be a fantastic (in the UK they would probably even call it world-beating) service provider for its users. As with other noble goals such…
A personal account on the oral proceedings I recently had before the Boards of Appeal I recently had oral proceedings at the EPO’s Boards of Appeal for the first time since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. As many practitioners may be interested in how this is organized, I am happy to share…
The English Patents Court has often been regarded as a relatively favourable jurisdiction for patentees seeking interim relief in the life sciences arena. This is for various reasons, including the fact that the English Court follows the approach adopted by the House of Lords in the American Cyanamid case, in which an assessment of the…
The new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA), which came into force on 1 January 2020, will be a cornerstone in helping the EPO’s Boards of Appeal meet their objectives of settling 90% of cases within 30 months of receipt and reducing the number of pending cases to fewer than 7,000 by…
