EPO and Cambodia Renew Bilateral Cooperation
By José Santacroce. Partner and Head of Patent Department.
A delegation from Cambodia led by Senior Minister of Industry and Handicraft Cham Prasidh visited the EPO on 31 October 2019 to meet with a team from the EPO headed by President António Campinos.
President Campinos and Senior Minister Cham reviewed the implementation so far of the EPO’s validation agreement with Cambodia. Under the agreement, which entered into force on 1 March 2018, applicants to the EPO can request validation of their European patent applications and European patents in the country. Cambodia was the first Asian country to recognise European patents on its territory.
“We are proud of the joint work done and results achieved over the past two years,” said EPO President Campinos. “Cambodia is one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia and now belongs to the group of countries with a solid global patenting strategy. The strengthening of Cambodia’s patent system through the validation agreement with the EPO is good for the local economy. For European companies, it provides further business and investment opportunities by extending the geographic coverage of their European patents to Cambodia.”
Senior Minister Cham said: “The validation system is a part of our
Brazilian PTO and EPO Launch Technical and Strategic Patent Partnership
By Carlos Cavalcanti. Lawyer, Managing Partner at Moeller IP Brazil.
Brazilian PTO and the European Patent Office (EPO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding on an Enhanced Technical and Strategic Partnership on Tuesday, November 26th, aiming to improve cooperation between Brazil and Europe in the area of patents. The agreement was signed by BrPTO President Claudio Vilar Furtado and EPO President Antonio Campinos at the Institute’s headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.
BrPTO’s president Claudio Vilar Furtado stressed the importance of the agreement to stimulate investment in innovation and industrial property, focusing on the generation of new patents, especially in partnership.
– In this agreement between BrPTO and EPO, Brazilians and Europeans are united so that patents are a central element of a business environment that drives innovation – said the president of BrPTO.
The agreement between the EPO and the largest patent office in Latin America aims to strengthen the patent system in Brazil and Europe to encourage innovation and economic development, as well as to promote trade and investment between companies. two regions.
– Brazil is an essential partner for the EPO and an important market for European companies – said EPO President Antonio Campinos, who added: – This …
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EPO and Chinese IP Office Enhance their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership
By José Santacroce. Partner and Head of Patent Department.
At their annual meeting in Suzhou on 12 November 2019, EPO President António Campinos and the Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), Shen Changyu, agreed to enhance their bilateral co-operation in the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The aim is to give patent applicants filing an international patent application in English at the CNIPA as Receiving Office the choice to opt for the EPO as their International Searching Authority (ISA).
It is expected that this new option will be offered in the course of next year, and be implemented as a two-year pilot programme.
CNIPA Commissioner Dr. Shen Changyu said: “The EPO and CNIPA are comprehensive strategic partners. For more than 30 years, the two offices have maintained a long-term close co-operative relationship. The fruitful cooperation results greatly benefited users and the public both in Europe and China. The two offices reached consensus on the designation of EPO as an ISA of the PCT international patent application in English filed at the CNIPA as Receiving Office. It will further benefit PCT applicants in China and even around the world. It is also a solid …
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EPO and Mexico Launch Reinforced Partnership
By José Santacroce. Partner and Head of Patent Department.
The EPO has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Reinforced Partnership with the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), further strengthening the longstanding co-operation between Europe and Mexico in the area of patents. The MoU was signed on 4 November 2019 in Mexico City by EPO President António Campinos and IMPI Director General Juan Lozano.
“Mexico is a very important partner for us, and our offices have already worked together to support innovation for 25 years” said EPO President Campinos. “Through our joint projects on the Cooperative Patent Classification, the EPO’s online patent search tool EPOQUE Net, comprehensive data exchange and judicial training we have brought our patenting procedures and work more closely in line. We are now entering a new phase in our co-operation, extending it to more strategic areas, with a view to making our patent systems as efficient, user-friendly and relevant as possible for innovators in both regions.”
The IMPI Director General Juan Lozano underlined the importance of the strategic alliance with the EPO to enhance the use of Mexican resources dedicated to the examination of national patents, as well as to accelerate applications previously examined …
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Moeller IP at AIPPI World Congress 2019
By Moeller IP
José Santacroce, Partner & Head of Patent Department, at AIPPI meeting with former colleagues from the European Patent Office.…
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EPO and INPI Brazil to further enhance their co-operation
By José Santacroce, Partner, and Head of Patent Department
The European Patent Office (EPO) and the National Institute of Industrial Property of Brazil (INPI) have agreed to work towards enhancing their co-operation. EPO President António Campinos and Claudio Vilar Furtado, President of INPI, signed on 22 July 2019 a Joint Statement in this direction following a bi-lateral consultation that formed part of a series of meetings between the EPO and IP offices from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. They also signed an agreement renewing the INPI’s access to EPOQUE Net, the EPO’s dedicated patent searching tool that contains more than 1.3 billion database entries.
In their Joint Statement, the two Heads of Office agreed to work together towards a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) establishing a pilot project aimed at strengthening the INPI’s capacity for searching and examining patent applications.
President Campinos underlined the importance of co-operation with INPI: “I am pleased to sign this Joint Statement today. As traditionally, Brazil has been an important co-operation partner for the EPO in Latin America. The INPI has great expertise in the patent grant procedure, and with today’s signatures we are paving the way to a closer relationship between our offices, …
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EPO, CEN, and CENELEC to Cooperate on Standards and Patents
By Jose Santacroce, Partner & Head of Patent Department
The European Patent Office (EPO), the European Committee of Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) have signed recently a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to enhance the support they provide to industry and stakeholders in Europe and beyond in the field of standard-essential patents.
This is the first MoU between the organizations who will now work together to extend knowledge about the relationship between standardization and patents.
The purpose of this collaboration is to support inventors, innovators, researchers and industry on standard-essential patents (SEPs) in different areas of technology by promoting the dissemination of technical standards including relevant patented technologies. The agreement complements the established co-operation in this field between the EPO, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and the European Commission.
“This agreement will help us to provide inventors and innovating businesses with information about the use of standards and patents in their field of activity,” said EPO President António Campinos. “Co-operation with standardization organizations is essential for tackling the challenges arising from the relationship between standards and patents. It will help ensure that the patent system continues to support a competitive innovation environment for businesses …
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European Patent Office Annual Report 2018
By José Santacroce, Partner & Head of Patent Department
The European Patent Office (EPO) recently published its Annual Report 2018.
The main statistics and trends are highlighted below.
European patent applications continued to grow in 2018, reaching 174 317 applications, that is +4.6% with respect to last year.
Large enterprises filed 71% of the last year´s patent applications, SMEs, individual inventors: 20% and universities and public research organizations: 9%.
127 625 patents were granted last year (+20.8% with respect to 2017), 45% of them were granted to EPO member states, US: 24%, Japan: 17%, Korea: 5% and China: 4%.
The opposition rate in 2018 was 3.2%; the decisions in opposition cases were as follows: patent revoked: 27%, patent maintained in amended form: 42% and patent maintained as granted: 31%.
The top 10 countries with the most European patent applications in 2018 were the following:
- US 43 612 (25%)
- Germany 26 734 (15%)
- Japan 22 615 (13%)
- France 10 317 (6%)
- China 9 401 (5%)
- Switzerland 7 927 (5%)
- Korea 7 296 (4%)
- Netherlands 7 140 (4%)
- Great Britain 5 736 (3%)
- Italy 4 399 (3%)
The top 20 applicants in 2018 were the following:
- Siemens 2493
- Huawei 2485
- Samsung
Enhancing the Visibility of Intellectual Property: EPO and LESI sign MoU on Bilateral Cooperation
By José Santacroce, Head of Patent Department
The European Patent Office (EPO) and the Licensing Executives Society International (LESI) have signed on 8 February 2019 a Memorandum of Understanding on bilateral co-operation to help innovators make better use of the European patent system. The agreement was signed by EPO President António Campinos and LESI President François Painchaud on the occasion of LESI’s recent Winter Planning Meeting in Miami, Florida.
This enhanced co-operation will enable the EPO and LESI to extend the reach of joint activities for stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, industry representatives, technology transfer experts, publicly funded research organizations, IP advisors, innovation centers, user associations, IP offices and government policy makers.
The Memorandum of Understanding between both partners will remain in effect for a period of five years and extends the successful history of co-operation between the EPO and LESI.
“The main goal of our agreement is to enable current and future innovators to make better use of the patent system by overcoming barriers such as lack of knowledge about IP and commercialization options,” commented EPO President António Campinos. “This will help innovators see the business opportunities that IP can create.”
The co-operation …
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Patenting Blockchain, One-day Conference at the European Patent Office, The Hague
By José Santacroce, Head of Patent Department at Moeller IP Advisors
The European Patent Office (EPO) held its first major conference on patenting Blockchain on 4 December 2018. The one-day event in The Hague explored the implications of blockchain for patent applications as the technology, which started in the financial sector, is spreading to all technical fields of industrial application.
In his welcome address EPO President Antonio Campinos mentioned that patent applications for blockchain are rising fast and such patents are examined by the EPO in accordance with well-established criteria developed on the basis of case law related to Computer-Implemented Inventions (CII).
The first keynote Speakers (Marieke Flament and Claire Wells) covered the blockchain basics, setting out the main principles, key players and areas of use for this new technology, and the first panel discussed the future impact of this rapidly developing field and its links to other unfolding digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Koen Lievens, Director at the EPO, and Wang Xinyi, Examiner at the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) presented the offices´ approaches to dealing with blockchain patent applications, whereas Nobuyuki Taniguchi (Nakamura & Partners) presented the evolution of Blockchain-related patents in Japan.
An analysis …
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