Methode

Leider ist diese Seite derzeit nicht in deutscher Sprache verfügbar.

In April 2005 a small team, the project taskforce, met to synthesise over 60 open-ended interviews on the future of the intellectual property (IP) regime. These interviews were the first phase of a process undertaken by the EPO which enabled the Office to explore multiple viewpoints of those outside and inside the system.

The chosen interviewees were people considered to have opinions worth capturing, with viewpoints not generally known to the Office. They come from a cross-section of worlds, from industry to society, from small business to multinationals, from politics to univiersities.

Over the next year, a further 40 interviews were conducted. These later conversations were more detailed and examined more carefully the specific areas identified during the initial phase of the project. To the best of our knowledge, this collection of interviews represents the first-ever aggregate exercise of its kind: an attempt to map the diversity of opinions about the key factors and significant challenges likely to impact the future of IP in general and patents in particular.

Once these interviews were undertaken, it was necessary to collate them and try to identify common threads and concepts. To do so, a scenario-building process took place within the EPO. This involved many individuals, drawn from all subject areas and all four EPO locations. The wealth of issues represented in the interviews and subsequent ideas drawn from more focused research were absorbed and translated into the scenarios.

What had started as a small institutional exercise rapidly grew into a larger more comprehensive overview of the whole IP system. It became clear that the system of intellectual property required comprehensive examination, on multiple levels, ranging from global to regional (European), national and institutional levels.

The questions these scenarios aim to answer are:

• How might IP regimes evolve by 2025?
• What global legitimacy might such regimes have?