2013

The Select Committee of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation held its sixth meeting in Munich on 10 and 11 December 2013.

The EPO's free machine translation service now offers 32 languages, covering all EPO member states plus the most important Asian languages

The EPO's Economic and Scientific Advisory Board (ESAB) brought together some 60 international patent experts at the EPO headquarters in Munich last week for a two-day workshop dedicated to the economic effects of the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court.

Meeting in Beijing this week, the heads of the EPO and SIPO renewed their commitment to supporting global innovation, signing two major agreements.

The world's five largest patent offices have published the 2012 edition of the IP5 Statistics Report

The seminar, which took place in Brussels on 13 and 14 November 2013, was the second in a series of inter-institutional training initiatives, launched last year by the European Patent Academy together with the OHIM Academy, targeting key players in public institutions across Europe.

The EPO has signed an agreement with the Republic of San Marino on national patent searches, which is aimed at fostering innovation and improving the environment for business.

The EPO has signed a validation agreement with the State Agency on Intellectual Property of the Republic of Moldova (AGEPI), which will allow European patent applications and patents to take legal effect in Moldova.

The Administrative Council has adopted in its meeting of October an amendment of the provisions of the European Patent Convention dealing with the requirements for the filing of divisional applications, namely Rules 36, 38, and 135.

The highlight of the day was a panel discussion with Estonian Justice Minister Hanno Pevkur, UK Under-Secretary for Intellectual Property Lord Younger, SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu, GE Europe CEO Ferdinando Becalli-Falco and TomTom CEO Harold Godijn.

Launched earlier this year, the competition asked students to define a research project of potential interest for future R&D.

The exhibition, commissioned by the EPO as part of celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the signing of the European Patent Convention in 1973, was officially opened by EPO President Benoît Battistelli and the Museum's General Director Wolfgang M. Heckl.

The city of Munich today changed the name of the area in front of the EPO headquarters (Isar building) to Bob-van-Benthem-Platz in honour of the EPO's first president, Johannes Bob van Benthem.

The EPO has signed an agreement with Lithuania to improve conditions for Lithuanian businesses seeking to protect their inventions in Europe.

A study conducted jointly by the EPO and OHIM study finds that about 40% of total economic activity in the EU is generated by IPR-intensive industries, and approximately 35% of all employment in the EU stems from such industries.

Russian-English machine translation for patents launched; Rospatent to use the CPC classification system

The world's five largest Intellectual Property Offices (IP5) have agreed to launch a comprehensive IP5 Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot programme as of January 2014.

In a decisive move forward on the road to a new building in Rijswijk, the European Patent Office (EPO) today signed the contract with the winning consortium of four companies belonging to the Group TBI at the EPO's headquarters in Munich.

In his first official visit to the Principality of Monaco, EPO President Benoît Battistelli met His Excellency the Minister of State, Michel Roger, Finance and Economy Minister Jean Castellini and other representatives of government and industry to discuss the role of patents in supporting innovation in Monaco and Europe.

Prior to joining the EPO, he was an economic consultant specialised in competition and regulation matters.

The Technical Board of Appeal in the proceedings T 83/05 concerning the so-called "Broccoli" patent has decided to refer further questions of law to the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO (EBoA).

The EPO announced today that a consortium of four companies belonging to the Group TBI, one of the largest construction, mechanical and electrical services companies in the Netherlands, in co-operation with two leading architectural firms, namely Ateliers Jean Nouvel (Paris) and Dam & Partners Architecten (Amsterdam), has won an international competition to design and construct its new "Main Building" in Rijswijk (The Hague), the Netherlands.

In a move to further improve multilingual access to information contained in patent documents, the EPO today made another set of European languages available in its free machine translation service Patent Translate. With the addition of Bulgarian, Czech, Icelandic, Romanian, Slovak and Slovenian, the service now offers on-the-fly-translation from and into English for 21 languages.

EPO President Benoît Battistelli and the Director-General of the Moroccan Industrial and Commercial Property Office (OMPIC), Adil Elmaliki, signed a set of co-operation agreements to strengthen the patent system in both Morocco and Europe.

EPO President Battistelli met with German Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger at the EPO headquarters in Munich today to discuss developments in the European patent system, and in particular the future unitary patent.

Making climate protection part of our daily lives is actually really easy and can even be rewarding - so goes the key message of the exhibition mounted by Bavaria's consumer organisation under the motto "Climate protection - everyone can do their bit!".

The EPO, the member states of the European Patent Organisation and the OHIM in its observer capacity met in Reykjavik on 11/12 June to discuss how to bring co-operation forward in order to improve the quality and efficiency of the European patent system, and thus better serve industry.

The agreement confirms the commitment of the two organisations to work together to better serve industry worldwide, and strengthens the EPO's wider strategy in connection with standards.

EPO sponsors prize in the European Satellite Navigation Competition

The IP5 offices renewed their commitment to developing the "Global Dossier", a system to simplify the viewing and management of applications filed in the IP5 offices. They also agreed to adopt the Global Classification Initiative, a new effort to harmonise patent classification.

The EPO and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) today announced the launch of the Japanese-English component of the EPO's automatic translation service Patent Translate.

EPO and SIPO sign a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance cooperation in patent classification

Some 500 guests attended the award ceremony at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, including Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Sander Dekker, the Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, and Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services.

EPO President Benoît Battistelli and EU Commissioner Michel Barnier today highlighted the creativity of Europe's inventors, and the role of the patent system in helping to translate this innovation potential into economic growth and social development.

Some 1.98 million patent applications were filed at the world's five largest patent offices last year, according to preliminary data just released by the EPO, JPO, KIPO, SIPO and USPTO, collectively known as the IP5.

A new study by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the European Patent Office (EPO) -Patents and Clean Energy Technologies in Africa- found that Africa has a huge untapped potential for generating clean energy.

On an official visit to Slovakia, EPO President Benoît Battistelli, met with Prime Minister Robert Fico, the Minister of Economy Tomáš Malatinský and other representatives of government, industry and academia to discuss how to further strengthen the patent system to promote innovation and economic growth in Slovakia and Europe.

Around 300 senior representatives of industry, academia and government gathered at a two day-conference organised jointly by the EPO, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Technische Universität München (TUM) to look at how to create markets out of research results.

In an official visit to Luxembourg President Benoît Battistelli met with the Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade, Etienne Schneider, the Head of the IP office, Lex Kaufhold, as well as with representatives of the national industry, the Business Federation of Luxembourg (FEDIL), and patent attorneys to discuss how the patent system can further encourage innovation in Luxembourg and Europe.

The EPO and the International Electrotechnical Commission have agreed to work closely together by facilitating the EPO use of IEC's standardisation documents in all phases of its patenting process.

An opposition division of the EPO has decided to revoke the European patent in the so-called "Brüstle" case in public oral proceedings held today.

The EPO has signed an agreement with the Institut français to boost French language training across Europe.

The award is presented annually to outstanding inventors in five categories. For the first time, the public is invited to cast their vote to select the winner of the Popular Prize.

During its 135th session, the Council re-elected Mr Jesper Kongstad as its Chair, for a three year mandate which will start on 1 July 2013.

This is a further milestone after the adoption of the unitary patent package in December 2012 and the signing last month of the international agreement on the Unified Patent Court.

The EPO has signed agreements on language training with the British Council and the Goethe-Institut in a bid to strengthen the use of the EPO's three official languages in those 27 member states that do not have English, French or German as official languages.

The EPO's Economic and Scientific Advisory Board has issued a statement with recommendations for improving the patent system, based on the main findings of its 2012 activities.

“The growth of filings from European businesses is a clear indication that industry here has opted to innovate its way out of the economic crisis”, EPO President Benoît Battistelli said.

"The EPO is a driving force for innovation, and thereby, for competitiveness and economic growth," he said.

The European Patent Office (EPO) welcomes the signing by EU ministers today in Brussels of an international agreement establishing a Unified Patent Court (UPC), which paves the way for the implementation of a unitary patent system in Europe.

With 63% of the filings, a clear majority came from non-European countries (2011: 62%), while the share from the 38 EPO member states was 37% (2011: 38%).

The EPO has revoked the Amazon “Gift order” patent after holding public oral proceedings in a first-instance opposition procedure.

The EPO and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today launched the Cooperative Patent Classification scheme (CPC), a global classification system for patent documents.