Christos Dimopoulos

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The European Patent Officeat a glance

• Christos Dimopoulos
• Head of the Vice-President's Office
• International/Legal Affairs (DG5)

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Who we are
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Locations

• The EPO has offices at
• five different locations.
• Its headquarters are in Munich.

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Number of staff in 2010
Around 60 are patent examiners
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Staff from 31 different countries (2010)

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Our Strategy
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Our strategy - main features (1)

• Since its inception almost 35 years ago, the EPO
  is financially independent (income from fees
  cover all outgoings and investments)
• 38 Members States to the EPC (include all 27
  members of the European Union, plus Albania,
  Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, the
  Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway,
  San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey).
  European patents are recognised in two further
  countries Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro.
• Beyond the borders of Europe, the EPO is active
  in facilitating the protection of European
  patents in neighbouring countries. In 2010, the
  EPO signed a Validation Agreement with Morocco
  similar is under discussion with Tunisia.
• The EPO is a global player. Based on its broad
  technical expertise, it is heavily involved in
  the efforts to introduce a unitary patent for
  Europe and to harmonise the patent system
  worldwide.

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Our Strategy - main Features (2)

• The EPO plays a leading role in developing and
  implementing electronic tools for patent
  searching and examination. Patent offices have
  for many years been satisfied users of the tools
  and databases set up and developed further by the
  EPO.
• The EPO complements the work of the national
  patent offices (NPOs) in Europe. The European
  patent system is a two-tier environment where the
  EPO plays the central role in the entire patent
  grant procedure.
• The national patent offices develop a dynamic IP
  and innovation policy at local level. An
  ambitious co-operation policy associating the EPO
  with the NPOs, in particular via the European
  Patent Network (EPN), is to be implemented to
  optimise co-operation between them.
• In order to maximise the potential and efficiency
  of its activities and to avoid duplication of
  work, the Office therefore concludes agreements
  with IP organisations such as the Office for
  Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) and
  the World Intellectual Property Organization
  (WIPO).

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The way forward
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The way forward

• In January 2011, two external studies on finance
  and IT commissioned by the President of the
  Office were discussed, both within the EPO and
  with its external stakeholders
• The IT study
• confirmed the reputation of EPO's current IT
  systems, but
• stressed the need for the EPO to play a leading
  role in making the European patent system more
  efficient and collaborative.
• The Financial study
• confirmed that the EPO is capable of financing
  its medium-term projects, but
• pointed out the risks inherent in its social
  liabilities, e.g. its pension system.

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The way forward

• In March 2011, the Administrative Council (AC)
  unanimously endorsed the proposals put forward by
  the President of the Office, based on the
  following scenario for boosting efficiency
• enhancing the quality of EPO products and
  services
• controlling costs
• maintaining overall fee levels
• implementing effective IT tools, simplifying our
  processes
• introducing new forms of work (e. g. part-time
  home working) and improving working conditions
  (new TH building project)
• developing EPOs leadership role in international
  co-operation
• setting up the EPN intensified co-operation
  between the EPO and the national offices of our
  member states.

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Making Europe the best place for innovation
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Making Europe the best place for innovation

• (a European Patent can be valid in up to 40
  countries
• with some 600 million inhabitants)
• European Patent Network
• Enhanced collaboration with OHIM
• Unitary Patent protection

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Improving access to patent documents
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Improving access to patent documents

• Patent searching will improve as access to EPO
  databases improves. The EPO has the worlds most
  complete set of patent data and the most
  extensive collection of patent-related literature
  (Espacenet, for example, is available to millions
  of users free of charge). Three recent examples
  of continuing efforts
• Climate change and identifying clean-energy
  technologies (CETs)
• Machine translation and EPO agreement with Google
• Access to ITU documentation

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Simplifying the global patent system
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Simplifying the global patent system

• EPO is member of the IP 5, a forum composed of
  the five largest patent offices in the world
  (EPO plus the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and US
  patent offices), representing 90 of the global
  patent activity.
• Main IP5 goals are
• eliminate unnecessary duplication of work
  among the offices,
• enhance patent examination efficiency and
  quality,
• guarantee the stability of patent rights.
• The EPO also enjoys direct relations with WIPO.
  Together they strive into making the global
  patent system more user-friendly and harmonising
  the patenting process as much as possible.

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More information?
www.epo.org
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• Thank you for your attention