ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
Reports on meetings of the Administrative Council
Report on the 57th meeting of the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation (7 to 9 June 1995)
The Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation held its 57th meeting in Munich from 7 to 9 June 1995 under the chairmanship of Mr P. Thoft (DK).
The Council elected the head of the Irish delegation, Mr S. Fitzpatrick (IE), to be Deputy Chairman of the Council. He will take up the position on 1 December 1995 for a three-year term. The Council also elected Mr H. Thöni (CH), a member of the Swiss delegation, to preside over the Working Party on Statistics.
The President of the Office, Mr P. Braendli, presented the 1994 annual report and informed the Council concerning developments at the Office during the first six-months of 1995. The President noted that for the whole of 1995, the number of applications filed would be substantially in excess of 70 000, the figure adopted in the business plan of the 1995 budget. If the trend up to 31 May held up, filings would be about 7.3% higher than the 70 000 estimated.
The number of Euro-PCT applications entering the regional phase, too, was slightly higher than expected. As a result workload in search and examination was running ahead of estimates. The number of requests for preliminary examination, in particular, was greater than anticipated. Appropriate steps had been taken to deal with backlogs. Technical appeals were likewise running slightly ahead of the budget forecasts.
More than 230 DG 1 examiners - about one-third of the total - were already performing substantive examinations under BEST; their contribution to output in 1995 should amount to approximately 8 000 equivalent examinations. In DG 2, 34 examiners were now taking part in BEST, and this figure would rise to 83 by the end of 1995.
The President also mentioned the fact that, 15 years after the first European patent, the 300 000th had been granted during the first half of the year. The certificate had been presented to the representative of the firm Asea Brown Boveri for a spray jet providing an improved and eco-friendly process of combustion in gas turbines.
The President went on to report that representatives of the EPO and the national offices of the contracting states had met for the fourth EUROTAB meeting in Newport. This time the main topics for discussion had been the protection and search of software-related inventions, the correction of errors in patent applications and a first analysis of the problems faced by applicants for a European patent at the interface between the centralised grant procedure under the EPC and the national law of the contracting states.
Turning to the PACE programme - facilitating accelerated prosecution of European patent applications (OJ EPO 1995, 485) - he said that the Office had received some 800 requests for accelerated search and/or examination. This was an increase of about 20% over the figures for the corresponding period in 1994.
Reporting on developments in legal and international affairs, the President said that 820 candidates had sat the European qualifying examination - one third more than in 1994, including 82 EPO examiners. SACEPO's annual meeting in March had focused on the Office's recent study of patenting costs in Europe and on its suggestions for medium-term fee policy. By and large the costs study had been well-received. Respondents across the board held that the Office gave very good value for money in terms of overall service, especially considering that some inventions - eg those claiming a product as well as a process - could normally be prosecuted before the EPO as a single filing whereas in the US and Japan they often have to be divided into separate applications.The Office's proposals on medium-term fee policy involved inter alia reducing certain fees which, given the healthy budget surpluses generated in recent years, seemed not merely feasible but highly desirable. There had been particularly widespread support for the idea of combining a modest reduction in the designation fees with a 50% cut in the filing fee, but the proposal did not receive the Budget and Finance Committee's blessing in April.
The President also spoke about the trainee placement scheme to facilitate staff exchanges between the Office and the patent profession (in industry or private practice), giving EPO examiners experience of the outside world and showing prospective agents how things are done at the Office. Between 1992 and 1994 a total of 150 examiners (87 from DG 1, 63 from DG 2) were sent on outward placements in a total of 13 contracting states. From 1991 to 1993 the Office also played host to 43 trainees on inward placements, who spent a month in DG 2 and/or DG 3. Then in 1994 the EPO welcomed 16 trainees, including 2 from the Swiss Office who spent six weeks in DG 1 followed by a six-week placement in DG 2. This year the total number of visiting trainees will increase to 30.
Turning to international affairs, the President brought the meeting up to date on the system for extending European patents to third countries. The number of extension requests is increasing all the time: last year the EPO received 1 032 for Slovenia, and 252 for Lithuania. The figures for the first few months of the current year are 467 and 242 respectively. On 1 May 1995, an extension agreement also entered into force for Latvia, but no figures are yet available.
Implementation of the extension agreement signed with Romania in September 1994 has been delayed because the necessary legislative work has still to be completed. For Albania - whose patent law already provides for extension - negotiations on a similar agreement got under way in May 1995. Malta, which back in 1992 expressed interest in an invitation by the Administrative Council under Article 166(1)(b) EPC, is currently bringing its patent legislation into line with the EPC. Here too the extension system is being considered as an interim solution.
Turkey - a country entitled to accede under Article 166(1)(a) EPC - had indicated during exploratory contacts that it would like to do so once modernisation of its national patent system was complete. Given the country's obligations under TRIPS and its customs agreement with the EU, this should occur by 1999, provided Turkey can also see its way to allowing substance protection. In the meantime it was keen to intensify co-operation in search and examination.
The reduced EPO fees for the international search and preliminary examination available to countries making the transition from a command to a market economy, approved at the Council's December 1994 meeting, entered into force on 1 April this year for all beneficiaries apart from Albania, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.
On patent information, the President reported that the first CD-ROMs of Greek patent documents had been produced at the end of May. They contained facsimile images of Greek patent documents from August 1988 to July 1994, plus the necessary software.
The EPIDOS-INPADOC legal status database now also contains Swedish data and information about the filing of Italian translations of European patents. With these two sets of data the EPO has very nearly achieved its goal of including all the EPC contracting states in the database.
This year's PATLIB symposium for Europe's patent information centres took place from 15 to 17 May in Luxembourg. Support from the Luxembourg Patent Office helped to make it a great success. The symposium was attended by many prominent representatives of the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, the European Commission and the European Parliament .
In agreement with the President of the Office, the Administrative Council noted the basic assumptions and data for budgetary, financial and business planning (1996-2000) and, in particular, that there would be no provision for a fee adjustment in the 1996 draft budget. The Council unanimously approved a co-operation agreement between the European Patent Organisation and the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office on international searching, and adopted a decision dispensing with the supplementary search report. It approved contract awards - among other things for the acquisition of high-resolution screens, printing and photocopying services and for the production of EP-A and EP-B documents - and proposals for appointments and reappointments to the boards of appeal and Enlarged Board of Appeal.