41st annual meeting of the US Bar-EPO Liaison Council

EPO President António Campinos and Chair of the US Bar-EPO Liaison Council Laura Brutman, together with their delegations, at the EPO in Munich on 3 December.

The US Bar-EPO Liaison Council held its 41^st annual meeting on 3 December, bringing together the EPO and representatives of the US patent profession to discuss key issues and developments in both Europe and the US.

Established in the US in 1984, the Liaison Council serves as a dedicated forum for exchange between the EPO and US applicants, who are the largest group of applicants at the EPO from any single country. Its goal is to strengthen co-operation and promote a deeper mutual understanding of European and US patent practice.

In his address to US delegates, EPO President António Campinos provided an update on recent developments in the European patent system, noting that the EPO would receive 200 000 applications this year for the first time in its history. He emphasised new measures being taken to enhance quality, the importance of the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court, and the added value brought by the validation system, which he noted had been wholeheartedly embraced by US users.

President Campinos said: “US applicants continue to be our largest user group, filing nearly a quarter of all applications at the EPO. Your views matter, which is why we have included US representatives in SACEPO. Bringing the US perspective enriches our work and helps us do better.”

Discussions on patent law and practice, quality and AI

EPO representatives delivered presentations on the EPO’s quality initiatives, the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court, the work of the Observatory on Patents and Technology, procedural and substantive harmonisation, including convergence of practice, the validation system and legal changes to the patent granting procedure.

Discussions underlined the success of the Unitary Patent system over the past two years, offering a simpler and more cost-effective route to patent protection and dispute settlement across Europe. The system is now widely trusted and used, with more than 75 000 requests for unitary effect from all over the world since its launch in 2023. Uptake by US innovators continues to grow, rising from 11% in 2023 to 16% in 2024, and reaching 19.4% so far in 2025.

The EPO also updated US delegates on its digital transformation and new AI policy, which reaffirms its human-centric, transparent and accountable approach. The Office outlined how it is embedding AI across the patent granting process to support examiners and improve efficiency and consistency.

The Chair of the US Bar-EPO Liaison Council, Laura Brutman, said: “It is impressive to see how quickly the EPO has developed AI best practices and implemented AI tools to continue to improve the quality of its services and the user experience.”

The meeting also addressed several technical topics of particular interest to US users, including the EPO’s approach to AI-assisted and AI-generated patent applications, the application of decision G1/24 on claim interpretation, and the pending referral in G 1/25 on adaptation of the description. The meeting also featured an in-depth exchange on “claim-like clauses” in divisional applications.