OCTOBER 2008
Home truths about the EPO
The European Patent Office has talked about raising the bar, and its allowance rate has fallen in recent years. Hugh Dunlop asks: what’s really going on at the Office?
| One-minute read |
| The EPO president has talked of having "more good patents" and "raising the bar", while the recent Administrative Council's report emphasised that only inventions of real merit should receive patents. The move towards making patents harder to obtain is backed up by evidence that the allowance rate is falling, with the number of patents granted last year falling compared to 2006. This shift could be due to poorer applications, tougher examination or a growing backlog. Some practitioners suspect that the EPO has already raised the bar on inventive step, sufficiency of disclosure and the bar on added matter. But a closer look reveals a more complex picture, with differences between areas such as electronics and software. Meanwhile, the backlog continues to grow and that is where the EPO's attention should be directed. |
The president of the European Patent Office is Alison Brimelow, former Comptroller of the UK Patent Office (now renamed the UK Intellectual Property Office). Her headline vision for the EPO is "What we need is not more patents, but more good patents" – an ambiguous statement, and one that raises the question "is the EPO raising the bar on patentability?"
The rest of this article is available to subscribers only. Subscribe today for full access to this article.
Alternatively take a free trial, giving you access to the current issue's contents*
If you are already a subscriber, please log in below to access the rest of this article.
*excludes some surveys and articles.