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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
Wednesday, December 19, 2007France: Profession of Patent Attorneys to be Abolished?With great interest and some kind of increasing astonishment I am watching theBlog of Mr Pierre Breese, a Patent Attorney working in Paris, reporting on discussions in France on a stunning political project: The abolishment of the profession of the Patent Attorneys ("conseils en Propriété Industrielle") by having a merger with the profession of the Lawyers ("avocats").I think I should not let these developments go unnoticed here. According to Mr Breese's most recent report, four months after the initiative of the Chancellery opening with determination the site of rapprochement between patent attorneys and lawyers, the situation progresses:
"[...] Such a community enhanced IP professionals help to raise the profile of France in the context of any significant progress at the French Presidency of the EU, starting in July 2008 (entry into force of the Community patent? System European courts regarding IP? ...) Let us all be ready for this deadline, and we hope that our representatives will be pragmatic for a rapid conclusion of the merger. [...]"I can't say that I have fully understood all that what is going on currently in France. Neither this one nor the (obviously?) deliberate  withholding of the Instrument of Ratification for the London Agreement by the Presidential Administration in Paris.Anyway, a merger between the professions would be a bold step, surely much enhancing the position of French IP specialists before the Courts of any sort of new pan-European patent litigation system. But what do they think of "training reasonable to allow CPI to upgrade the fields of law other than IP"? Here in Germany it takes five years or so of full-time academic studies plus a further time of traineeship in order to get admitted to the lawyer's profession, let alone two big exams. There are very few individuals in Germany having a law university degree plus a technical university degree plus a patent attorney training in oder to acquire a double-qualification both as a lawyer and as a patent attorney as well. Do the French want to give some kind of a discount in order to facilitate such sort of double qualification? See also some earlier postings of Mr Breese on this topic here.Technorati Tags: Patents
Friday, December 14, 2007EPOrg Administrative Council on a Strategic Approach Towards EPO 2.0From 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.Well, I think it will be more interesting to go into some of the details of such plans later on. Technorati Tags: Patents
Amendment to Netherlands Patents Act 1995: Abandonment of 6-Years-Patent and other Changes."[...] The Patents Act 1995 and Implementation Decree 1995 are undergoing a review. Previous evaluations of the Act have shown that the current system for patent holders, including amendments, is a valuable addition to the European patenting system. The intended amendments to the Dutch system mean that the six-year patent will be discontinued and, from now on, patent applications may be submitted in English. In addition, a number of fees will undergo radical changes.Read more ...Technorati Tags: Patents
Thursday, December 13, 2007Bye, Bye, EPC 1973.The revised European Patent Convention (EPC2000) comes into effect on December 13, 2007. EPO has revised the website www.epo.org, and both the new 2000 and the 1973 versions of the EPC areavailable concurrently so that users can consult and compare the texts during the transitional phase. For each article or section in a particular version, a cross-reference list in the right-hand column indicates the corresponding section(s) in the other version.Although there is no confirmation that Portugal diplomats actually have managed to deposit the Instrument of Ratification for the EPC2000 with the German Foreign Office in Berlin, it is generally assumed that no one of the EPC 1973 Member States including Portugal will have failed to join the EPC 2000. [UPDATE 2007-12-13 12:00] EPO has just updated the EPC2000 Ratification Status Page, confirming that according to the information available to them, the deposit of the Portuguese Instrument Of Ratification took place on 12.12.2007. A very last-minute action, indeed. Technorati Tags: Patents
Wednesday, December 12, 2007UK-IPO Has Published 2007 Annual IP Crime Report.TheUK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) has published the 2007 Annual IP Crime Report. The document sets out the range of activities undertaken by police, trading standards, other government agencies and industry to tackle the threat posed by IP Crime. The report aims to identify specific areas of threat and specific harm, and set out plans for future work to ensure that IP Crime is not seen as a soft-crime and that effective action is taken against the organised criminals who operate in this field."[...] Whilst a wide range of enforcement agencies, IP rights holders and industry have been invited to contribute, in some sectors the returns were low, and in some cases there was a nil response. This is disappointing. Although there has been an improvement in the level of sharing of intelligence between enforcement agencies, IP rights holders and Government departments there are still significant gaps.The report does not appear to be much explicit on the question on patent infringements in their relation to criminal law. Technorati Tags: Patents
Monday, December 10, 2007Switzerland To Introduce Regulation For Patent Attorneys.Switzerland has been an island of virtually unregulated professional representation of clients in patent related matters. This is aboutto change now [In German only; sorry.]. The Swiss parliament has just passed a Bill on Patent Attorneys [In German only; sorry] as well as another Bill establishing a Federal Patents Court [In German only; sorry].In short, also in future everybody will be entitled to sell professional services in IP-related matters but the label "Patentanwalt" will be reserved for those registered individuals having a certain educational background including a patent attorney's qualification examination. In the new Swiss Federal Patents Court, technical and non-technical judges together will hear the patent-related cases. Technical judges will be of a complimentary status and even patent examiners and patent attorneys might be considered unless a conflict of interest is to be assumed. In Switzerland (which does not for part of the EU but is Member of EFTA) they apparently had the same sort of a political debate on entitlement professional representation before the Swiss Federal Patents Court: At the beginning, the Draft Bill provided a general clause of entitlement for professional representation to general lawyers (Reschtsanwäte). It had been envisaged to give the Swiss Federal Patents Court the power to allow also professional representation en-bloc by the members of the new Patentanwalt profession. However, at the end of the day, this idea was waived, and the German-stlye approach was adopted: Patent Attorneys (Patentanwäte) are now admitted for professional representation in nullity proceedings only. In all other sorts of proceedings, in particular in infringement proveedings, they have a right to appear in court and must be heard there but there must be an umbrella representation by some general lawyer.Technorati Tags: Patents
Friday, December 07, 2007EPO Revokes Patent For "Electronic Ordering System"The EPO just has distributed a press release via e-mail:"Press releaseThis patent had been granted during the "hot phase" of the debate on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. In those days, many politicians, in particular MEPs, got quite irritated about that particular grant, and FFII did exploit all that with significant impact amongst politicians and journalists. Along with others, FFII then filed a Notice of Opposition, and now the EPO Opposition Division has not upheld that very contested patent. Times are changing. No, they have changed. Today, I guess you most probably would not get such a patent in the first instance. This decision by no means is in itself something like a tidal change but it reflects that such a change has occurred since those wild days at the beginning of this century. Technorati Tags: Patents
Wednesday, December 05, 2007EU Commission Mooting To Open Negotiations Of A Plurilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.According to publicDocument CM 4058/07, the Working Party on Intellectual Property (Patents) will, on December 12, 2007, examine some recommendation from the Commission to the Council to authorise the Commission to open negotiations of a plurilateral anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (15486/07). The latter Document is not currently open to the public.Perhaps all this is linked to this statement where the European Commission had announced that it will seek a mandate from European Member States to negotiate a new Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with major trading partners, including the US, Japan, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. Such an agreement would strengthen efforts to protect European intellectual property around the world, a key part of the EU's Global Europe trade strategy. ACTA's goal is to provide a high-level international framework that strengthens the global enforcement of intellectual property rights and helps in the fight to protect consumers from the health and safety risks associated with many counterfeit products.Technorati Tags: Patents
Why Is France Withholding The Instrument Of Ratification For The London Agreement?On October 09, 2007, the French Senate, the upper house of the French Parliament, accepted both theratification bill for the EPC2000 as well as the ratification bill for the London Agreement. On October 17, 2007, the bill concerning ratification of the EPC200 was signed into law, and one day later, on October 18, 2007, the bill concerning ratifiocation of the London Agreement was also signed into law.The EPO website currently assures that France will make it to deposit the Instrument of Ratification concerning EPC2000 in Berlin in due time by December 13, 2007.This surely is no surprise. If well-oiled and properly instructed, the French Parlamentary, Presidential and Diplomatic machineries will no doubt be able to create and deliver an important document of this kind within a few weeks. But what about the co-pending Instrument of Ratification for the London Agreement? It must have been processed on the same chain of desks virtually one after the other, but there are no assertions that it will be deposited very soon: Ms Alison Brimelow, President of EPO, had given an interview to Mr Joff Wild of IAM: "[...] Her best guess, she told me, is that the London Agreement will come into force in the middle of next year - it will take four months after the French have deposited their instruments of accession and that has not yet happened. [...]"If we assume that "middle of 2008" might be 1st of July, 2008, then the date of deposit might be in March of 2008. Why should France take additional three months to bring a document to Berlin where a very similar matter can be delivered by December 13, 2007? Something seems to be brewing. In the second half of 2008, French will take the helm of the EU by exercising a half-year term of EU Presidency. And, it is well known that France appears to be quite ambitious to get through during this term a political solution for the problem of a EU-wide court system for patent matters, if possible in a bundle with a re-vitalised EU Community Patent. Spain might be seen as a notorious trouble-maker with regard to the language issue in the context of a EU Community Patent but threatening the Spanish Government with unlimited withholding of the Instrument of Ratification for the London Agreement surely won't impress them - Spain will not join this Agreement in any foreseeable future anyway.However, Germany appears to be keen on making sure that the London Agreement will enter into force as soon as possible. And, Germany insists on a court system where cancellation / limitation matters are dealt with separately from infringement matters, not just so much in line with the French position. Hence, one might be tempted to think about speculative options to the effect that withholding the Instrument Of Ratification is a dead pledge directly pointing to Berlin: If Germany should not be willing to give in or compromise with regard to this strongly debated aspect of the patent court system, then the London Agreement might perhaps be frozen in for some unlimited period of time. Hence, I would not be overly surprised if the London Agreement will come into force not earlier than in 2009, if at all. Of course, this might be nothing else than a wacky speculative exercise, and France can immediately destroy any such bubbles simply by sending a diplomatic courier to Berlin. I hope they will do so. [UPDATE 2007-12-07] According to the EPO EPC2000 Status webpage, the the deposit of the French Instrument of Ratification for EPC2000 took place on 5.12.2007. Technorati Tags: Patents
Sunday, December 02, 2007Portugal And EPC2000 - A Last Minute Action To Come.For those of the readers of this Blog who don't care about the commentary sections of the blog postings I would like to point out that I have got - via a chain of intermediaries -some information originating from a Portuguese colleague according to which the President of the Republic Portugal should sign the document of ratification on about 10th December, which will be deposited in Germany on around the 12th of December.If this sould be proven true, Portugal will remain on board of the EPC by some sort of last-minue action. This would mean that probably all EPC1973 Member States will make it before December 13, 2007. Technorati Tags: Patents
The Great Free Beer Debate.I think I safely can assume that the readers of this Blog surely will know and appreciate that this is a very sober and earnest undertaking, if not even going as far as to say that it is as dry as a bone. No flippant gag would ever be allowed here, and everybody knows that there are only uniformly desolate monotonous pages virtually without any sort of humor and with very few illustrations. However, I feel I will have to allow an exception ... If you have closely followed the entire debate of the past years on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions you might enjoy reading this brilliant piece of literaturehere to the full ... (Click on the right-hand side of the page on the "Free Full Text (PDF)" link) written by Mr David Musker, European Patent Attorney with R.G.C. Jenkins & Co., London. Hilarious!(Link thanks to well-known IPKat Blog) Technorati Tags: Patents
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