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Monday, April 16, 2007

POPA on Crisis of Patent System.

Ever heard of POPA? According to

their website it is a

Patent Office Professionals Organisation:

"[...] The Patent Office Professional Association (POPA) is an independent union of professional employees formed in 1964. The Association is not affiliated with any national union and acts independently, answering only to the desires of the professionals it represents. All dues go directly to the representation of professionals right here in the Patent and Trademark Office. The Association represents all professionals in the Patent and Trademark Office excluding managers and trademark professionals. [...]"

Obviously it is an organisation covering professionals at the

US-PTO only.

However, on Friday 13, 2007, they have published an

Open Letter From a Coalition of Patent Examiner Representatives which is not limited to U.S. nationals. The letter is directed to:

Mr. Jon Dudas, Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office;
Prof. Alain Pompidou, President, European Patent Office;
Dr. Jürgen Schade, President, Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt;
Mr. David Tobin, Commissioner of Patents, Registrar of Trademarks and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Intellectual Property Office; and
Dr. Friedrich Rödler, President, Österreichisches Patentamt.

The text is signed by Examiners of the U.S. PTO, EPO, CIPO, German PTO, and Austrian PTO.

They argue that many in the intellectual property community have come to realize that an increase in patent applications does not necessarily represent an increase in technological progress. They now recognize that poor-quality patents can become a hindrance to, rather than a stimulus of, innovation and economic growth. They understand that a strong patent system requires high patent standards and quality examination. According to their letter, in many patent offices, the pressures on examiners to produce and methods of allocating work have reduced the capacity of examiners to provide the quality of examination the peoples of the world deserve. They even go as far as to say that the combined pressures of higher productivity demands, increasingly complex patent applications and an ever-expanding body of relevant patent and non-patent literature have reached such a level that, unless serious measures are taken, meaningful protection of intellectual property throughout the world may, itself, become history. In particular, they are demanding:

Increase the quality of examination by providing patent examiners with more time to search and examine patent applications;
Acknowledge the importance of protecting the intellectual property of inventors while simultaneously protecting the public domain by removing from any reporting, rating or incentive systems any bias with respect to granting or not granting patents;
Guarantee the independence of the examination process so that it is governed solely by the legal framework;
Ensure that examiners have the opportunity to maintain their legal and technological competence by providing adequate and continuing legal and technological training;
Maintain staff skills with search, examination and administrative tools by providing regular update training;
Recognize the considerable investment patent offices have in their staff by developing and maintaining collaborative rather than adversarial relations with employees and their representatives; and
Strengthen the world's patent systems by encouraging your respective governments to provide standards of patentability that reward innovation while discouraging undeserving patent applications so as to provide a strong presumption of validity for issued patents.

It appears to me as if this open letter might be an intitiative to put recent

SUEPO-initiated strikes at the EPO on a broader, more international basis. They seem to fear that ceretain political as well as scaling problems connected with the patent system it its present shape might undermine any prosperous future thereof.

I would like to read some portions of that letter as a call for higher standards concerning the non-obviousness requirement of a patentable invention aka inventive step. But in practice the inventive step is filled with real meaning by the competent courts, not by the Examiners.

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Patent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.

Monday, April 16, 2007

POPA on Crisis of Patent System.

VPP