EPO Looks To Future Technologies, 2010 Leadership Change
Kaitlin Mara is an Associate Editor at Intellectual Property Watch, which is an independent journal covering issues of international intellectual property policymaking, with a particular focus on Geneva institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Health Organization.
In an article this month, “EPO Looks To Future Technologies, 2010 Leadership Change,” she writes about the upcoming challenges for the EPO. Current EPO President Alison Brimelow will not seek reappointment as President of the European Patent Office when her current term expires at the end of June 2010. Brimelow, a UK national, was elected President in December 2003 by the Administrative Council of the EPO.
Kaitlin also discusses last month’s European Patent Forum in Prague:
An oft-repeated statistic at the event was the fact that some 93 percent of business method patent applications to the EPO are rejected.
EPO’s Alexander Gardiner told Intellectual Property Watch that only one-fourteenth of the EPO patent-examining staff is devoted to information and communications technologies (ICTs), but that they account for 75 percent of refusals. And within ICT refusals, 40 to 50 percent are in business method patenting.
Several participants at the forum told Intellectual Property Watch they wished there had been a stronger American presence at the event. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has traditionally been more willing to approve business method patents than has the EPO, and participants told Intellectual Property Watch they felt it would have been valuable to hear an explanation of why. This is especially true as recent court cases might be changing legal precedent on business method patenting in the US (IPW, IP Law, 6 November 2008).