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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Thursday, December 20, 2007EPO Fighting Complex Applications By Setting Prohibitive Claim Fees.The Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation, the entity running the European Patent Office, has taken two decisions related to Official Fees:
Assume there is an application of, say, 150 pages comprising 100 claims. This surely is not a standard case today but from time to time such filings are made. Under the new rules of 2009, an amount of EUR 32.780,-- would have to be paid in addition to all of the other fees. Hence, in future it will be cheaper to file a bunch of smaller applications with a few claims each than to put various things together into one application for later deciding on payment of additional search fees and on filing divisionals. The impact on the various branches of the industry might well be specifically different. Perhaps most damage of this amended rule might occur with regard to patents in the fields of chemistry and biochemistry where a larger number of claims might make sense under the given circumstances. Technorati Tags:   Patents
Hi ! I have the following question : is there any legal action that could be undertaken against such a drastic modification of the rules relating to fees ? Let imagine that the chemical industry thinks it is an unfair ruling, what could it do ? In the US, GSK has recently managed to postpone a modification of examination procedures of the USPTO. Is the Administrative Council of the EPO out of reach of any legal injunction ?
The question from the last contributer is easy to answer. Remonstrate with the members of the EPO Council ie the national Governments. The chemical industry has a reasonably powerful lobby, no, not least in Germany, if the German health system is anyindication. Meanwhile, the imagined chemical industry could decline to place any more business with the EPO. Instead file national patent applications in each of the 34 EPO member States. Mind you, there's then the translation costs to pay, and 34 sets of official fees, and 34 patent attorney firms. Maybe the EPO claims fees aren't so much of an impediment, after all??? Of course, it's easier for the likes of Toyota Motor, who only need to file in Germany and maybe France. But even Toyota prefers the EPO, up to now, and I bet it still will, despite the new fee levels. The only reason for ridiculous numbers of claims is the US system, and the resulting tendency of Asian corporate applicants to send us here in Europe the same absurd set of claims that it has already written for USA.
and not only asian applicants. The tendency to file ridiculously long applications and ridiculous numbers of claims is pervasive in fields dominated by US applicants, e.g. Biotech. These applications are a burden on the system and are most likely the cause of the recent ruke change.
Ah, the Brimelow brigade at work again :-). The problem today is that if you draft a biotech application with less than 35 pages, then it will be impossible to sufficiently disclose the application to meet the criteria under Art 83 EPC. In a similar manner, it will become inaccessibly expensive, at least for small European Biotech firms, to protect all of those categories of inventions that arise and are unitary during the course of a biotechnological invention. Without being excessive, it is not uncommon for there to be 60 or more well defined and well categorised claims. The EPO has obviously set out to fill its coffers whilst doing what it hopes will be less work, except that no doubt this will force applicants with heavy treasure chests to file ever increasing numbers of divisional applications or even, as another poster has suggested, multiple, simultaneous filings of related subject-matter. How that will help the EPO backlog and increase EPO response time is beyond me, but obviously, I'm no EPO development strategist :-p  Post a Comment
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