EPOrg Administrative Council on a Strategic Approach Towards EPO 2.0
From an EPO press release which just hit me via e-mail a few minutes ago:
"[...] Munich, 14 December 2007 -- The Council of the European Patent Organisation has backed a strategic approach to handling future workload in the European patent system. The proposal is outlined in a study presented by the Board of the Organisation's Administrative Council and was endorsed at the Administrative Council's meeting on 14 December. It contains a set of strategic recommendations on how the European Patent Office and the patent offices of the member states should best address the challenge of ever-growing numbers of patent applications, increasing backlogs and securing the quality standards of European patents.
[...]
The report highlights that in the past 25 years, the volume of patent applications at the EPO has quadrupled to reach 208 500 in 2006, and is expected to increase further. Much of this growth is also attributable to the enhanced global activity of companies, to emerging economies such as China, India and South Korea in the field of patents, and the increasing importance of new technologies, such as information and communication technology and biotechnology, rendering the patent grant procedure also more difficult and costly. As a result, workload and backlogs at the patent offices increase, causing quality problems and long pendency times which can adversely affect the innovation process. The study comes to the conclusion that "no patent office in the world can deal with the workload challenges on its own." Therefore, a greater cooperation between the patent offices is called for that not only focuses on achieving quantitative advantages, such as avoiding duplication of work, but also on maintaining and improving the quality of the patenting process. Moreover, the study makes the case for a reflection on the appropriate level of inventiveness, especially the criteria for patenting excluding non-technical matter.
On the basis of these findings, the report pinpoints five strategic directions for dealing with the future workload of the European patent system:
Utilising work done by others (other patent offices in Europe or outside Europe, applicants and third parties).
"Raising the bar" (i.e. granting exclusive rights only for technical innovations with sufficient inventive merit)
Improving the efficiency of the process (coming up with new measures to deal with the workload in an efficient way)
Enhancing cooperation within Europe (e.g. by building the European Patent Network that consists of the EPO and the national patent offices)
Making the Organisation and the EPO fit for the future (enhancing their capability to deal with new challenges, reviewing governance and finance).
The report formulates policy recommendations for each of these five areas, which can form the basis of a work programme for the EPO, now that it has been endorsed by the Administrative Council. [...]"
Well, I think it will be more interesting to go into some of the details of such plans later on.
"Making the Organisation and the EPO fit for the future (enhancing their capability to deal with new challenges, reviewing governance and finance)."
It would be more appropriate to migrate the monster into the EU framework. This is just another bureaucracy looking for expansion. The double governance inhibits real progress on patent reform in Europe.
Patents
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