Some time ago I had pointed to an interview given by Mr. Konstantinos Karachalios of the European Patent Office (EPO) discussing some of its concerns about the future of the intellectual property system done by EPO by launching a major study of the "critical issues" ahead. This first interview had been published on IP Watch but taken down without giving reasons a few hours later. Instead, a shortened version had been published. Now. IP Watch shows up with another interview with Mr. Karachalios:
"[...] IPW: You talked about technical assistance, which you said was not being sufficiently provided to or used by developing countries. What is the reason for this?
KARACHALIOS: I think that the positive aspects of the system are still not used by the ones that need them most urgently. One of the reasons is that the demanding side - the developing countries - do not yet have the right tools and capacities to make full use of the system. This is what technical assistance should focus on and this is what we have been trying to do for several years. What is urgently needed is a coordination of donors also regarding IP, a coordination already achieved in other fields, for example the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's [OECD] integrated frameworks for free trade related technical assistance.
IPW: Do you think the European and the global IP system in general would be ready to change - is it possible for the people in the system to think out of the box?
KARACHALIOS: Not every fish likes jumping out of the water. On the other hand, it was the amphibians that opened new spaces for life in earth's early days. There is an interesting theory that they had to do so because they were losing the battle in the water, so they had to search for alternatives. So, sometimes it is the losers, not the winners that kick off major change and evolution.
In our case, I think that we will all have to work hard to face the widespread perceptions in society, and partly in politics, and we may also need to question in depth some basic assumptions and leading paradigms.
[...]
KARACHALIOS: There is a widespread perception that the system is coming under stress. In the US it is very apparent, there is a lot of very vivid debate there, and this [spills] also over to Europe. There are two main symptoms: One is the increasing backlog, the patent offices face increased difficulties to cope with the numbers of applications. Apparently the system has been very attractive and successful, so an increasing number of people wish to use it. But this poses questions. Is the experienced geometrical growth sustainable and if yes, how can we cope with it? To give you an example: based on the situation and the predictions at its creation period, the EPO was conceived to become in the long term an organisation with some 2,500 persons, dealing with a maximum of 40,000 applications a year. Not even 30 years after, we are 6,500 persons and receive 200,000 applications a year, trends upwards. You see here that predictions and extrapolations based on solid experience and common sense do not always deliver realistic results.
IPW: Is this what people call 'patent inflation'?
KARACHALIOS: Yes and no. First of all, within Europe, a new market was created, which did not exist before. This was not taken fully into account when introducing a new, regional system. On the other hand, internationally seen, there are new technological fields to which the patent system is extended [such as] bio-, nano-, cogno-technology, and other innovative fields like business methods, semantic web-related inventions [and] plant varieties which were thought not to belong to the patent regime. Also the fields of 'small grained' technical improvements, which could be seen to belong to the category of 'sub-patentable innovation' exert considerable pressure onto the patent system, mainly because there seem not to exist satisfactory systems to reward creators in all these fields. So, the patents paradigm, precisely because it has been historically so successful, is extended to cover all these fields.
So numbers are growing for different reasons and we have to understand them and design a strategy for Europe. We wish to contribute to this, since we are a genuine European organisation, although not a body of the European Union or Commission. As we look for our position within Europe and the role of Europe within the world, we need to look strategically into the future. [...]"
This should clearly be read in conjunction with the Hohenkammer report. I must, however, confess that I still do not get the very gist of all these statements. In part, they are highly metaphorical like "Not every fish likes jumping out of the water". What does Mr. Karachalios want us to say? What does it precisely mean if the EPO (or: the European and the global IP system) would "jump out of the water"? And, in the Hohenkammer report, we find assertions like
"[...] Future of the system: Views ranged from denial, i.e. that possible threats were an 'incorrect perception' in one group to agreement that system would undoubtedly change in another. [...]"
This sounds as if it might have been drawn up to serve as some euphemistic paraphrase conveying a message that there had been considerable disputes on the very basic question if something like a crisis of the patent system does really exist at all. Behind all that there seems to be a feeling of modest nervousness or even panickiness on the side of some EPO Officials.
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
an interview given by Mr. Konstantinos Karachalios of the European Patent Office (EPO) discussing some of its concerns about the future of the intellectual property system done by EPO by launching a major study of the "critical issues" ahead. This first interview had been published on 
IP Watch but 
