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European Patent Office

Supporting innovation for the benefit of Europe’s citizens

The mission of the European Patent Office (EPO) is to support innovation, competitiveness and economic growth for the benefit of the citizens of Europe. Its task is to grant European patents for inventions on the basis of a centralized procedure for the contracting states to the European Patent Convention (EPC), which was signed in Munich on 5 October 1973 and entered into force on 7 October 1977.

The EPO is the executive arm of the European Patent Organisation, an intergovernmental body set up under the EPC, whose members are the EPC contracting states. The activities of the Office are supervised by the Organisation’s Administrative Council, which is composed of the delegates from the contracting states. The EPO has its headquarters in Munich, a branch at The Hague and offices in Berlin and Vienna. With its workforce of nearly 6 500 staff, the EPO is one of the largest European institutions.

The EPC states currently are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, United Kingdom, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, the Slovak Republic and Turkey. European patent applications and patents can also be extended at the applicant’s request to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro. European patents cover a geographical area of more than 540 million inhabitants.

The EPO was set up with the aim of strengthening co-operation between the countries of Europe in the protection of inventions. This was achieved by adopting the EPC, which makes it possible to obtain patent protection in several or all of the contracting states by filing a single patent application in one of the three official languages of the EPO (English, French and German). The EPC also establishes standard rules governing the treatment of patents granted under this procedure.

More than two decades have clearly demonstrated the advantages of this approach: Since its creation in 1977, the EPO has received 2.5 million European patent applications and granted well over 800 000 European patents. Moreover, the Office has established itself as the leading authority for international procedures under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, a treaty that makes it possible to file for patent protection in more than 100 countries on the basis of a single patent application.