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Utilisation Pilot Project

One of the outcomes of the strategy debate, which was concluded by the EPO's Administrative Council in 2006, was a proposal to utilise work done by the national patent offices (NPOs) for subsequent filings with the EPO. This utilisation concept, which is part of the European Patent Network initiative, is intended to increase the efficiency of the patent granting process by avoiding duplication of work. Since 1 April 2007, tests have been under way within the framework of the Utilisation Pilot Project (UPP), with a view to full-scale implementation.

The UPP will be used to assess the extent to which the results of work done by the national patent offices of the EPO member states during the examination of applications within their priority year can be utilised by both the European Patent Office (EPO) and the applicants.

The aim of the project is to find out whether the overall efficiency of the European patent granting procedure can be improved by utilising NPO work.

Operated by the EPO together with four pilot offices (Austria, Denmark, Germany and the UK), the UPP started on 1 April 2007 ("UPP by Applicant") and will continue to run throughout 2008 in the form of "UPP Direct". Findings will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.

• "UPP by Applicant": In this phase, the pilot office of initial filing invites applicants at random to participate in the UPP. Applicants who accept the invitation send national office search and examination results on the initial application to the EPO together with their subsequent European application. "UPP by Applicant" started in April 2007 and ended on 1 April 2008.
• "UPP Direct": In "UPP Direct" the EPO requests the pilot offices to send publicly available copies of national office search and examination results for selected initial national applications direct to the EPO. These are cases where the national application has been published but the search on the subsequent European application has not yet been conducted. "UPP Direct" started in January 2008 and will run throughout 2008.