Patent Law

Take to the Streets: A Grassroots Reform Effort for the EPO

By Douglas J. Sorocco, J. Matthew Buchanan, Laura C. Woods and Emily E. Campbell.

As many of you may have heard, employees from the European Patent Office have simply had enough.  On Thursday, September 18, 250 EPO employees simply walked off the job in protest and headed to Brussels, Belgium.

Why, you ask?  Did they demand higher wages? More vacation hours?  Better work conditions?  No, no, and no.  They simply wanted the EPO to re-examine its patent policies by raising the standards required to gain patent protection in Europe.

According to one article (click here to read), the EPO staff ?claim[s] that the [EPO] is decentralising and focusing on granting as many patents as possible to gain financially from fees generated.?  Some estimates indicate that national patent offices have accumulated over $442.1 million (that?s right, almost half a billion bones) of income from EPO-granted patents.  And that is for the 2007 fiscal year alone!  Projected estimates raise this total to an astonishing $3.9 billion dollars in 2008.  

SUEPO, the EPO staff?s union, has demanded that the European Commission review the EPO administration and patent-granting policies in an effort to raise the quality of patents issued by the EPO.  It appears that SUEPO has at least minimally accomplished its goal, as the Commission dispatched a delegation of officials (including the EU Commissioner himself) to address and evaluate the union?s concerns.  As of today, no official agreement or review has been released, but, it appears, that the EPO staff is back to work.

I guess the old adage still rings true:  ?If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.?

More on this story as information becomes available.  And, as always, comments are much appreciated. 

Photo courtesy of www.suepo.org.

Full post as published by Phosita on October 02, 2008 (boomark / email).