Sub Navigation
Opening address of the President of the European Patent Office, Alison Brimelow
Minister Vizjak,
Director of the Slovenian Intellectual Property Office,
Your excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is an honour and a pleasure for me to welcome you to the opening of the European Patent Forum 2008. Seeing so many participants here today from 45 countries, it is quite clear to me that the theme we have chosen for this year's Forum is again one that fascinates specialists from diverse disciplines and from many corners of the world.
Let me begin by welcoming the delegates of the member states of the European Patent Organisation.
Welcome too to the representatives of the European institutions who have travelled to Ljubljana today.
I should also like to extend a warm welcome to the many representatives from industry, commerce and the patent profession and, of course, to all our speakers. Over the next two days their talks will illuminate different aspects of our theme.
What links environmental protection with patents? What are the links we need to recognise but don't as yet? What should the patent system do to promote climate-friendly technologies? Or do patents even prevent such technologies from gaining ground?
The lectures and discussions we are offering you will consider these and related questions. As you can see, the programme is ambitious: the European Patent Forum 2008 is a platform for trading facts, views and thoughts on a theme that many patents seek to address but for which there is clearly no neat solution - at least not yet.
This is the latest event in a series launched in Brussels two years ago. Its considerable impact was already felt the following year in Munich. The patent system provides a constantly-changing mirror image of society and its sub-systems. The European Patent Forum considers and analyses that reflection process in greater depth.
The "Scenarios for the Future" study we presented in 2007 in a way provided a basis for the European Patent Forum 2008: the "Blue Skies" scenario, which looks at the interplay between technological developments and systemic risks, highlights the link between the worsening environmental problems and intellectual property protection.
Europe has set global standards with its policy on climate protection. The European Patent Office sees this Forum as a contribution towards strengthening Europe's lead as a shaper of opinion. If effective climate protection is a political aim of the EU, then the same must apply to its innovation policy and the intellectual property rights that support that policy. Our conference is devoted to examining these links.
To my knowledge, the European Patent Forum 2008 is the first event to spotlight this issue. The European Patent Office broke new ground with the "Scenarios" study and now, at the European Patent Forum, we are zoning in on the correlation between climate change and industrial property.
Along with focusing on this important theme, we are also here to honour extraordinary inventors whose creativity has improved - and sometimes revolutionised - many aspects of our lives. And so I look forward with great anticipation to the "European Inventor of the Year 2008" award ceremony, which will take place this evening in this room.
The Forum conference and the gala have been made possible by exemplary co-operation between the EU Council Presidency, the European Commission and the European Patent Office.
I am indebted to the Slovenian Ministry for the Economy and the Slovenian Intellectual Property Office for their tireless support in helping to organise this event.
Special thanks too for the co-operation of the European Commission, which played a major role in supporting and promoting the event. Here again is a sign of the intense interest that Europeans have in intellectual property protection, an interest that extends beyond institutional boundaries.
I am confident that our discussions on this year's controversial theme, held in the spirit of close co‑operation that is a hallmark of the Forum project, will be a fruitful learning experience for us all.
Thank you for your attention.