Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panels
The Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panels (SQAPs) bring together external European patent attorneys and EPO experts to perform joint in-depth reviews of selected granted EPO files. They identify areas of convergence and divergence in interpretation of the EPC, highlight areas of good practice and provide valuable feedback on user expectations of quality to promote learning and improvement. These expert panels report to the SACEPO Working Party on Quality, a forum designed to foster a common understanding of quality between the EPO and the users of the European patent system.
Each year, the EPO holds a SQAPs session on search reports and written opinions, and one on grants. This ensures that the SQAPs panels assess our core products every year. These core assessments are complemented by a third session which offers deeper insights into the EPO's work at other stages of the patent granting process. In 2023 the third session looked at intermediate communications and this year for the first time there will be a session on refusals.
The feedback gained from internal and external experts is analysed and used to help form our Quality Action Plans. For more information, please see the Quality Report 2022 and the Quality Report 2023, which include a detailed report on past SQAP activities.