The European Patent Office (EPO) has published, on the website of the European Patent Academy, the conference proceedings Quality in the European Patent System - a conference at the EPO, The Hague, November 21 and 22, 2005, i.e. before one year nearly up to the day. Nevertheless, the bulk of material still appears to be of some relevance.
Presentations documented in the proceedings include:
Opening speech of the President of the European Patent Office, by Professor Alain Pompidou
The concept and meaning of quality in the European patent system, by Professor Joseph Straus, Director, Max Planck Institute
Point of view from the patent attorney profession "All that glisters is not gold ...", by Mr. Chris Mercer, President of epi
Point of view from the European business community: industry, by Mr. Jacques Combeau, UNICE representative
Point of view from the European business community: small and medium-sized enterprises, by Ms. Manuela Loidl, UEAPME representative
Point of view from a national litigation and enforcement judge, by Dr Klaus Grabinski, Düsseldorf Regional Court, Germany
The EPO rules and standards, by Mr. Thomas Hammer, Vice-President, DG 1 Operations, EPO
The point of view of a user's needs, by Mr. Roland Hill, Chairman and Managing Director, Contra Vision Ltd.
EPO Quality Management System for examination area, by Mr. Pantelis Kyriakides, Vice-President, DG 2 Operational Support, EPO
EPO Quality Management System for examination area, by Mr. Colin Philpott, Principal Director, PD Quality Management EPO
EPO Quality Management System for examination area: Internal Audit, by Mr. Rolf-Peter Spiegel, Director, Quality Audit, EPO
Chairman's comments, by Mr. Jan Brinkhof, attorney and former judge
The role of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office in the quality system, by Mr. Peter Messerli, Vice-President, DG 3 Appeals, EPO
Perspectives of a national judge regarding patent quality, by Sir Hugh Laddie, consultant and former judge
Attorney perspectives: Quality downstream of the EPO - respect for granted rights, by Mr. Roy Marsh, British and European Patent and Trademark Attorney, Hoffmann Eitle
Attorney perspectives: "Qualidity" - Quality meets Validity, by Mr. Rainer Böckelen, Patent Attorney, TBK Patent
A quote from Mr. Pompidou's opening speech:
"[...] I would like to call to your attention during the next few minutes the standards governing patentability in the European patent system and quote from a recent study issued by the Fraunhofer Institute, a leading German applied research organisation, on "Innovation versus Patents" comes to 4 significant conclusions, which I describe as:
a. The exorbitant increase in the filing activity occurring since the nineties can be explained only in part by a corresponding growth of investment or increase of efficiency in R&D activities. It is rather a shift in the motivation of applicants for seeking patent protection that comes under consideration.
b. Protection of intellectual property is an essential precondition for promoting the innovative strength of our society, which is faced with global competition.
c. Such protection must, however, be reserved to real creative achievements. Patent protection in particular must be granted only for inventions which are truly innovative and contribute to the state of the art. In this context, the legal requirements of inventive step (Art 56 EPC) and sufficient disclosure (Art 83 EPC) play a decisive role. If patents were granted for inventions, which represent trivial developments or are not sufficiently disclosed or with claims that are too broad, this would impede new competitive developments.
d. An inflation of low quality patent rights would lead to increased research costs and obstruct competition unnecessarily. At an advanced stage, it could even lead to a collapse of the entire patent system. These conclusions have also recently been underlined by some delegations of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation. We have to take them very seriously. Therefore, the new Quality Management System my colleagues will present to you in Session III of our programme will provide the Office with better instruments for taking action in this respect. In addition to what classical patent theories have ever conceived in the global knowledge economy, patents no longer merely sustain competitiveness on markets for products and technical services, but play an ever-increasing role in financial markets as well.
As is well known, the global patent licensing business has, in the past decade, grown four times faster than trade with tangible goods with a global turnover of some 100 billion Euro. At the same time, large patent portfolios rather than individual patents play an increasing role in the market capitalisation of companies and in other forms of access to external financial resources including risk capital. They have a strong bearing on the respective positions of companies engaged in friendly or hostile takeovers or merger negotiations.
This relevant shift of motivation in the filing strategies of applicants obliges all of us to put a basic question on the table: should patent systems produce the maximum of exclusive rights that financial markets apparently call for, or should they take the opposite direction and strictly apply the patentability requirements provided by law, so as to give truly innovative R&D the necessary room to breathe? It is not the law that is at stake here, but the standards of patent practice which give the system its economic meaning and impact. [...]"
Well, I can't find this Fraunhofer paper titled "Innovation versus Patents" on the Internet. Perhaps it has not been published yet.
At the other end there was a remarkable intervention by Mr. Pantelis Kyriakides, Vice-President, DG 2 Operational Support, EPO, as to be read on page 221 of the report:
"[...] Everyone is seeking perfection, but could we live with a European patent system that applies the 80/20 rule as in industry? Is it worthwhile spending two or three times the cost to find a needle in the haystack as it is sometimes the case with some very complex applications?
To Pantelis Kyriakides, there is a law of diminishing returns with respect to the amount of relevant prior art which may be found, and the length of time spent searching. For the EPO it is a balance between ensuring that the available prior art has been found, and spending the appropriate amount of time on the searching activity. It is an overall quality issue for the public, not just classical theoretical quality. There must be a balance between legal certainty, timeliness, cost and consistency. You cannot ignore one of those four, or sacrifice one for the other. The users also want a good balance between these aspects. [...]"
The quality question might become a decisive point for the future of the entire patent system. Mr. Kyriakides might perhaps be tempted to overlook that today the quality of the patent examination process is, by wide circles of the general public, no longer seen as some sort of traditional tradeoff between costs and the result obtained but as a measure of overall fairness of the patent system.
Anyway, it appears to be quite clear that the European Patent Office has understood the gravity of the situation and is determined to take appropriate action.
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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:
European Patent Office (EPO) has published, on the website of the 
