OPENING OF THE SYMPOSIUM AND WELCOMING ADDRESS
Benoît BATTISTELLI
President of the European Patent Office
Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen,
It is my honour and pleasure to say a few words to open the 15th European Patent Judges' Symposium, taking place over the next three days here in the magnificent city of Lisbon.
This is the fifteenth time since 1982 - the year of the first symposium - that an EPC contracting state has joined forces with the EPO to organise what is now one of the largest get-togethers of European judges specialising in patents.
So let me say a special word of thanks to our Portuguese hosts, and especially to Antonio Campinos and his colleagues from the Portuguese Patent Office, to Luís Noronha do Nascimento, President of Portugual's Supreme Court, to Ana Luísa Geraldes, Director of the Judicial Studies Centre, and to Lisbon Appeal Court judge Eurico José Marques dos Reis, for all their preparatory and organisational work in the run-up to this major event.
May I take this opportunity in particular to pay tribute to Antonio Campinos, who has shown remarkable dynamism at the head of the Portuguese Office and been a leading player in the international IP debate. In a few weeks he will be taking up his duties as President of OHIM. OHIM and the EPO will doubtless be strengthening their ties over the coming years, for the benefit of IP development in Europe.
I now turn to the subject that brings us all together here.
Initiated to promote uniform and harmonised application of European patent law, over the years these meetings have become an institution.
They allow judges specialising in patent litigation to come together to review case law and compare legal traditions and judicial practice, and they are filled with the European dynamism which today inspires the world of patents, and of intellectual property in general.
I am therefore particularly gratified to see judges from 32 countries, including 28 EPC contracting states, here in Lisbon today. In addition to the representatives of the other European countries, I would also like to welcome the judges representing the USA and Japan.
Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, I took up my position as President of the EPO on 1 July this year. I am delighted and honoured to serve an institution that for over three decades has set up and developed a centralised patent grant system which has amply demonstrated its high quality and become a global benchmark.
The EPO must remain one of the best, perhaps even the best, of the world's IP offices - that is the objective I have set myself. That means maintaining and improving the high quality of the patents that we grant, and granting them at reasonable speed and cost.
One major aspect of the pursuit of improved patent quality is the "Raising the bar" process, launched three years ago and now a key to the future prosperity of the European patent system.
In that connection I should also like to mention the essential part played by the EPO's appeal boards in regulating the quality of the patents that the Office grants.
On 1 October 2010 the European Patent Organisation will have 38 member states. Including the two "extension states", the European patent system currently enables inventions to be protected in 40 European countries, constituting a potential market of 600 million people - much bigger than the USA and Japan combined.
Filings growth in recent years at the world's main patent offices has been spectacular, though the economic and financial crisis of the last two years has put a brake on that growth, and the EPO too has felt its effects.
In 2009 the Office handled around 210 000 applications, 8% fewer than the previous year, but the trend in the first half of 2010 indicates a 4% recovery compared with the same period of 2009, meaning that we are likely to get back to 2008 levels in the near future.
Faced with this situation, mastering the workload remains very much on the agenda and demands an appropriate response.
The European Patent Network (EPN) has a significant part to play here. Co-operation between the EPO and Europe's national patent offices gives rise to major synergies which not only sustain the EPO in its endeavours but also strengthen the role of the national patent offices.
While I am convinced that the EPO has to remain the central authority for the granting of patents in Europe, the national offices too have a legitimate desire to develop a dynamic IP policy, and it is in the EPO's interests to help them do so. For me, that is the true meaning of the EPN.
The EPO is also involved in various co-operation projects with national patent offices at global level.
One of these is the IP5 process, in which the world's five largest patent offices (EPO, USPTO, JPO, KIPO and SIPO) are seeking to promote efficient work-sharing initiatives.
In particular, they are working on ten foundation projects intended to establish common high-quality standards for search and examination in every office. One of the greatest challenges is access to prior art in Asian languages.
Another of my objectives is to strengthen the EPO's role in the ongoing debate on the introduction of a European Union patent.
I firmly believe the EU patent will enable Europe to be more innovative and competitive in relation to its main competitors.
Thus the EPO has every reason to take an active part in establishing this new instrument, given that the EU patent as envisaged would be a European patent granted by the EPO.
Another of my aims is to redouble the EPO's development effort on the machine translation programme for patent applications. Coincidentally, I shall have to leave you before the end of this symposium to join the EPO technical committee which is meeting in The Hague to examine this very issue.
There is also no need for me to stress the crucial importance of finally setting up a unified and centralised litigation system, as a counterpart to the centralised grant procedure. It is a serious shortcoming of our system that we have a centralised structure for granting patents but a diversified system of courts.
Ladies and gentlemen, a patent system is all the stronger for having a unified litigation system, as it then offers far greater legal certainty.
Significant and rapid progress has been made on establishing a European court in charge of litigation for the European patent and the future EU patent. I should like to take advantage of my presence in Lisbon to honour the energetic part the Portuguese authorities played in moving matters forward when they took over the EU Presidency.
The result is a draft agreement which is currently awaiting an opinion from the Court of Justice of the European Union as to its compatibility with the EU Treaty. The opinion of the Advocates-General is now known. It recognises the possibility of setting up such a court, while raising a number of issues which according to experts do not appear to constitute insurmountable obstacles.
So we must hope that the CJEU's opinion will allow us to establish a mechanism essential to the European economy and industry, or at least will not rule out the possibility.
I shall say no more on this major topic, as you will be able to debate it at length in the first two sessions on your agenda.
Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, that brings me to the end of what I wanted to say to you. Let me now conclude by wishing you all every success in your discussions over the next few days.
Thank you very much for your attention.