CA/88/15 Orig.: en Munich, 25.09.2015
SUBJECT: President's activities report
SUBMITTED BY: President of the European Patent Office
ADDRESSEES: Administrative Council (for information)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Subject Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. PERFORMANCE 1 A. DG 1 WORKLOAD AND PRODUCTION 1 a) Filings 1 b) Efficiency 2 c) Publications 3 d) Time to delivery of the search products 4 e) Time to publication of the patent 5 III. MEASURES TAKEN IN DG1 TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE QUALITY AND SERVICE 7 A. EXAMINER RECRUITMENT IN 2015 7 B. "ESPRIT DE SERVICE” 7 a) "Esprit de service" | "VICO for Oral Proceedings” 7 b) "Esprit de service" | New WiFi for Oral Proceedings 8 c) "Esprit de service" | 1LCS 8 d) "Esprit de service" | Praktika Extern 2015” 8 C. CAREER PATH AND REORGANISATION 9 a) Examiner Career: Team Managers and Senior Expert Examiners 9 b) Performance Management 10 c) DG1 Quality Action Plan 11 d) Harmonisation activities in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) area 12 e) Areas of Competence (AoC) 13 f) Paid extra activities for examiners 13 D. PROCEDURES AND CLASSIFICATION 14 a) Early Certainty from Search (ECFS) 14 b) PCT Direct 18 c) Training activities for the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) 19 d) Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office 20 IV. BOARDS OF APPEAL 21 A. DG 3 PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTION 21 B. STRUCTURAL REFORM OF THE BOARDS OF APPEALS 22
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V. INTERACTION WITH STAKEHOLDERS 23 A. SACEPO 23 B. PARTNERSHIP FOR QUALITY 24 VI. IT and AUTOMATION PROJECTS 24 A. ITR – DELIVERIES FOR EXAMINERS 24 B. CMS – NEW SYSTEM INTEGRATOR 25 C. NEW AUTOMATION GOVERNANCE 26 D. IT SECURITY 27 E. OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN AUTOMATION 28 VII. BUILDINGS AND PROCUREMENT 29 A. NEW MAIN THE HAGUE 29 B. OTHER BUILDING PROJECTS 29 C. CENTRAL PROCUREMENT 29 VIII. QUALITY 30 IX. HUMAN RESOURCES 31 A. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW PERFORMANCE AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 31 B. HEALTH AND WELL-BEING 32 C. SOCIAL DIALOGUE 34 D. TRANSPARENCY ON WORKING CONDITIONS: PUBLICATION OF THE SERVICE REGULATIONS ON THE EPO WEBSITE 35 X. EPN 36 A. CO-OPERATION WITH MEMBER STATES 36 B. EUROPEAN PATENT ACADEMY 38 a) Institutional Strengthening 38 b) Judicial Training 38 c) Innovation Support 39 d) e-learning 39 C. CO-OPERATION WITH OHIM 40 D. REPRESENTATION BEFORE THE EPO 40 E. EUROPEAN PATENT REGISTER 41 F. PATENT INFORMATION 41
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XI. EPO AS A GLOBAL PLAYER 41 A. INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS 41 B. BILATERAL RELATIONS 42 C. IP5 COOPERATION 43 D. TRILATERAL COOPERATION 45 E. COOPERATIVE PATENT CLASSIFICATION 45 F. STRENGTHENING THE PCT 46 G. SUBSTANTIVE PATENT LAW HARMONISATION 47 XII. UNITARY PATENT / Unified patent court 48 A. UNITARY PATENT 48 B. UNIFIED PATENT COURT (UPC) 48 XIII. THE EPO AND SOCIETY 49 A. ANNUAL REPORT 2014 49 B. EUROPEAN INVENTOR AWARD 49 C. CLIMATE CHANGE, GREEN TECHNOLOGIES AND STANDARDS 50 XIV. CONCLUDING REMARKS 51 XV. RECOMMENDATION FOR PUBLICATION 51
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I. INTRODUCTION
In order to ensure transparency and enhance reporting of Office activities to the Council, a comprehensive overview of the year just passed is presented to each March meeting of the Council. This present interim report thus describes the principal developments so far in 2015; the full account will be presented in March 2016.
II. PERFORMANCE
A. DG 1 WORKLOAD AND PRODUCTION a) Filings
The first months in 2015 have shown a slowdown in patent filings. At the end of May 108 647 European patent filings were recorded (European direct applications and PCT international applications in 2015). This represents a 4.5% decrease compared with the corresponding figure of 2014, which was boosted by an extraordinary surge in PCT filings from the US as a consequence of the introduction of the America Invents Act First-to-file system in the US in March 2013.
At the end of August, the number of requests for a European patent (European direct applications filed in 2015 and PCT applications entering the European regional phase in 2015) amounted to 101 378 applications, 1.2% above the corresponding figure for 2014.
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During the period January to August 2015, the Office received 145 555 search requests (-0.1%) as well as 94 232 requests for European examination (+1.8%). This represents an increase of 0.7% in the workload compared to the same period of 2014. It is expected that the end of year total will be very close to the budget figure. At the end of May 2015, the EPO was selected as ISA by the applicants for 36.4% of all PCT international applications filed in 2015 (37.1% for the whole of 2014). The examiners' output reached 243 190 search, examination and opposition products, 14% above the figures at end of August 2014. b) Efficiency
In the framework of the Quality/Efficiency strategy, it is the goal of the Office to keep its overall staff complement constant while increasing its production in ways sufficient to manage the workload and maintain or improve quality.
The figure below illustrates the continuing success of this strategy, whereby the number of Full Time Equivalent employees has decreased while the number of products produced by each FTE is sharply increasing, a clear marker of the improved efficiency of the Office.
Paid man years Products per FTE (FTE) 7 000 55 54.3 54
53 6 750 52
51 49.8 6 500 6 580 50 6 571 6 526 49.0 6 472 49 48.4 6 436 6 429 6 431 47.7 48 6 250 46.4 47 45.5 46
6 000 45 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 Sep‐2014 Aug‐2015 Paid man years, FTE SEO Products / FTE
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Core time per examiner increased by 5% over 2014 (Search + Examination + Opposition time over Available paid capacity went up from 83,3% in Jan-Jul 2014 to 86,1% in 2015). Average performance in term of productivity has been much better than last year (7%) and better than planned providing more than 8.000 additional Products compared to plan. c) Publications
Targeted measures have been taken by the Office since beginning of this year in order to increase both the production of grants and speed up the administrative processes leading to publication. After 8 months in 2015, the EPO published 44 588 European patents, which is 3.8% more than during the same period in 2014. Of the granted patents, 31.3% (-1.6%) were published within 36 months.
EPO Published Patents 68 000 66 712 budget 70 000 65 657 64 613
60 000
50 000
40 000
30 000
End of August End of August 42 938 44 588 20 000
10 000
0 2012 2013 2014 2015
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d) Time to delivery of the search products
The duration of the search process is measured by the age expressed in months of the file since the date of priority at the time the search report – including written opinion is sent (median time).
Age in months at the end of the search 16 15.0 14
12
10
8 8.2 EP first filings National 6 5.8 PCT (ISA) 4
2
0 2012 2013 2014 Sep 2014 ‐ Aug 2015
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e) Time to publication of the patent
The time elapsed is measured from the date of entry into the European grant procedure up until the date of publication of the patent: for the European direct application this is the date of receipt, and the Euro-PCT application, the date of entry into the regional phase. It measures the duration of the European grant procedure completed during each reporting period. The objective set out is 36 months from the start of the granting procedure.
Time to publication of the patent in months from the start of the EPO grant procedure
44.6 43.3 42.7 42.9
36
24
12
0 2012 2013 2014 Current 2015
The time up to grant decreased from 44.6 months in 2012 to 42.9 months so far in 2015 (median time).
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The following table further highlights the key EPO core business related statistics at the end of August 2015.
General EPO Statistics 21 September 2015 2014 2015 2015/2014 in % 1 Total European patent applications (Jan-Aug) 100 159 101 378 1,2%
2a Direct European applications (Jan-Aug) 38 828 38 663 -0,4%
2b PCT applications entering the regional phase (Jan-Aug) 60 730 61 710 1,6%
3 Searches carried out (EPO level) (Jan-Aug) 150 396 163 727 8,9%
- of which European + supplementary + other 74 970 89 940 20,0% - of which International PCT searches carried out 57 307 56 624 -1,2%
4 European examinations carried out (EPO level) (Jan-Aug) 75 976 78 229 3,0%
International preliminary examinations carried out (EPO 5 5 281 6 280 18,9% level) (Jan-Aug)
6 Oppositions (EPO level) (Jan-Aug) 1 654 1 287 -22,2%
7 Total Examiner Products DG 1 (Examiner level) (Jan-Aug) 213 785 243 189 13,8%
8 SEO Time (Search, Examination, Opposition in '000 days) 443,6 470,8 6,1% (Jan-Aug)
9 Technical appeals cases settled (Jan-Aug) 1 521 1 554 2,2%
10 Patents published (Jan-Aug) 42 938 44 588 3,8%
Pending workload search expressed in months of search 11 10,2 8,4 -17,6% production (EPO level) (August)
Pending workload examination/opposition expressed in 12 56,7 56,4 -0,5% months of exa/opp production (EPO level) (August)
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III. MEASURES TAKEN IN DG1 TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE QUALITY AND SERVICE
A. EXAMINER RECRUITMENT IN 2015
A key element of the Efficiency/Quality strategy is to reallocate resources to the core of the patent grating process, notably by increasing the number of examiners in relation to other staff. Examiner recruitment is thus an essential step in implementing strategic policy. The combined efforts of DG1 and Human Resources are focused in reaching the maximum examiners headcount, aiming at increasing diversity in our examiners population and hire the best possible candidates.
A total of 77 new examiners started already in 2015 (situation on 02/09/2015). Additionally, 53 offers have been sent out bringing the total of offered plus already started to a total of 130. An additional 10-15 extra examiners will still be recruited for this year. The estimated total headcount for DG1 on 31/12/2015 is between 4255 and 4260 examiners depending on the on-going specific recruitment initiatives for technical areas with a high recruitment needs. With two remaining recruitment events in 2015 (one in Munich and one in The Hague) the Office aiming to provide the first recruits to start beginning of 2016 (February 2016 Academy) in order to keep recruitment as a continuous process.
B. "ESPRIT DE SERVICE” a) "Esprit de service" | "VICO for Oral Proceedings”
Since 1998 oral proceedings by video conference are legally accepted by the EPO. Since the introduction of a new technical solution in May 2012 this service is used more and more. For the period September 2013 - August 2014 the Office had 583 oral proceedings scheduled via ViCo. For the period September 2014 - August 2015, 702 were also scheduled via ViCo. This increase confirms the positive trend achieved in previous years and shows that not only applicants and representatives but also examiners are getting used to this service thereby leading to an overall more efficient way of working. In order to further improve the reliability of this service, a connection test with the facilities of the EPO is offered to applicants in advance of oral proceedings. A more systematic use of this testing possibility is envisaged for applicants requesting for the first time oral proceedings by VICO.
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b) "Esprit de service" | New WiFi for Oral Proceedings
In the public area of all EPO buildings where oral proceedings take place, an EPO WiFi network dedicated to oral proceedings has been deployed. External users can obtain a username or password at the EPO reception desk. The WiFi network allows using services such as VPN to connect to remote networks, which is very helpful for parties attending oral proceedings. c) "Esprit de service" | 1LCS
In line with the service-orientation of the Office, First-Line Customer Service for DG1 is operational since November 2012 for all examiners on the three sites Munich, The Hague and Berlin, including those examiners working part-time from home. During the second quarter of 2015 the number of tickets handled in DG1 has stabilised compared to Q1 and reached a total of 1038. 68% of tickets were closed within 3 working days and 79% of all enquiries were resolved within 5 working days. As of 1st May 2015 the system was further improved by changing instructions so that inquiries from applicants to PatentAdmin requiring input from examiners are handled more efficiently. These tickets are now also taken into account when calculating the closure rate for DG1 tickets. d) "Esprit de service" | Praktika Extern 2015”
There are 41 examiners in 2015 taking part in the Praktika extern program. 15 placements are already complete (agreements signed sealed and delivered) and the examiners are ready to start. The majority of examiners managed to get their first choice of firms. The first praktikum took place 1st June, 3 in July, 5 in August and the rest spread out in September, October and November. Munich and London appear to be the most popular choice of location due to the number of large attorney firms. This year the placed examiners are provided with a presentation package in order to inform the participating firms about our latest improvements to increase our service orientation: ECfS and PCT Direct.
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C. CAREER PATH AND REORGANISATION a) Examiner Career: Team Managers and Senior Expert Examiners
Managing long term careers whilst keeping up motivation and performance is one of the challenges the EPO is facing. Within the framework of the HR Roadmap and more notably within the Future Career System, the EPO has defined future career paths in particular for examiners, such as the managerial career and the technical expert career. After extensive preparation and testing, the EPO is now implementing gradually these new career opportunities, i.e. the Team Manager and the Senior Expert Examiner positions.
The introduction of the Team Manager in DG1 is one of the main changes in the EPO's managerial structure over the next years. It is an essential element of the managerial career track for examiners which might lead to a managerial position at director level and beyond. The Team Manager structure will support the strategy of the Office through harmonisation of working methods, sharing best practice, improved timeliness, optimized performance management and financial savings through the creation of larger directorates. In addition, the Team Manager structure provides a good basis for early identification and development of future managers within the Office.
DG1 tested the Team Manager concept with respect to content and expected benefits by means of a one year pilot which finished in March 2015. 33 teams comprising 325 examiners, equally spread across all clusters, were involved in the pilot. The Team Managers are positioned as line managers and in this role they contribute to the directorate's goals by optimising the achievement with regards to qualitative and quantitative results of the teams and their individual members. In addition, they also perform examiner core tasks. The overall outcome of the pilot is positive and builds the basis for further roll-out in DG1. In August 2015 the first 39 Team Managers have been selected, they took up duties as from 01 September 2015. The new structure will be implemented gradually with the ultimate goal to have around 5 teams of ca 12-15 examiners in a directorate of ca 60- 80 examiners. In total this will lead to ca 300 Team Managers and ca 65 -70 Directors in DG1.
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Next to this managerial career path, the EPO also offers a new technical expert career path for examiners who see their strength and focus in patent related and technical matters within DG1. Also here a gradual roll-out is foreseen during the next years in order to get to ca 150 senior expert positions in DG1. The senior expert examiner will contribute to the business goals through individual high level of performance and through exceptional contribution to the results of the directorate. The senior expert maintains and influences the EPO's core process of patent granting and post-granting by pro-active knowledge transfer and advice, thereby fostering efficient, high-quality examination procedures whilst contributing to the EPO at large in strategic, political and implementation processes related to these tasks internally and externally. The senior expert provides active support to the management line and is an exemplary reference for staff. They have taken up duties as of 1 July 2015.
For both, Team Managers and Senior Experts further appointments are foreseen as of 1 January 2016. b) Performance Management
The new performance management system has been introduced Office wide on January 2015. In order to ensure a harmonised performance assessment of examiners in DG1, a specific guidance document has been issued, setting out expectations per grade relating to performance and competencies alike. As a first step of the performance management cycle, objectives have been set for each examiner in line with the expectations per grade. As a general rule, performance expectations increase with growing experience. In addition to quantitative objectives like the number of searches, examinations etc., also individual quality objectives have been defined for the examiners in DG1. As a general rule, the objectives are linked to and support the quality/efficiency strategy of the office.
Between May and July, line managers held formal intermediate review meetings with their staff. The goal of these meetings is to make sure that the level of achievement of objectives is in line with the expectations and to take corrective measures where necessary. The review meetings have also been used to check whether the demonstrated level of competencies is in line with the requirements for the function and grade. This is an important step in order to fully introduce the newly developed competency framework.
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c) DG1 Quality Action Plan
The DG1 Quality Action Plan comprises challenging objectives for 2015 that require continuation of the good progress made in 2014, with actions that respond to the findings of internal quality reports and emphasise the further development of the Quality Management System, improvement in timely delivery of products and continued focus on coverage of highly relevant Asian documentation during search.
CASE - Conformity Assurance for Search & Examination
The DG1 non-conforming products registration procedure CASE has now been running for over a year. The introduction of CASE has led to increased consultation within the Examining Division before issuing a search or sending grant documents which is reflected in an increase in the quality of granted applications.
Figures show a constant increase in the use of CASE, which indicates the growing familiarity in this new quality procedure among examiners. At the end of July, CASE checks showed 98.4% of search and 98.7% of examination products to be conformant.
Asian documentation
Over the last year DG1 has targeted Asian documentation as a key area for action. Examiners have all been trained and supplied with up to date support information. There has been an increased focus on improving both search and translation tools. This work has resulted in a marked increase in the number of examiner consultations of Asian documentation during search to 2 million documents per quarter – double the amount of 2013. This level of consultation is reflected in an increase to 22% of all patent citations originating from Asia, with 43% of all search reports citing at least one patent with an Asian priority.
The current User Satisfaction Survey demonstrates continuous improvement in satisfaction with respect to Asian documentation. The results returned this year show that applicants and attorneys feel that the EPO has significantly improved in its use of Asian documentation.
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The internal awareness campaign has continued with training for all examiners and the comprehensive external communication strategy has been augmented with a flyer on Asian documentation as well as the standard presentation being available for all examiners and directors going on mission.
Work has begun in analysing Indian and Taiwanese patent activity and the influence on patent documentation from these countries.
A trend-watching programme has started for major Asian countries with the results being circulated to DG1 management as well as relevant departments in DG2 and DG5. d) Harmonisation activities in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) area
Following the re-structuring of its ICT principal directorate in 2014, DG1 continues to accompany the changes arising from the technical convergence of the Computer and Telecommunications industries, and to exploit its new-found agility in this area. One principal benefit is an even greater level of procedural harmonisation (particularly regarding business methods, wireless and network security, and computer implemented inventions) and an enhanced ability and presence in related issues such as standards and open source. In this respect a number of initiatives have come to fruition, such as the lifting of the Limitation of Competence in Business Methods for US applicants. A first revision of the CII content of the Guidelines for Examination is also approved and incorporated into the 2015 version, and further revision will take place in 2016.
Many ICT applicants file across an increasingly broad range of technologies, often bridging the traditional structures of the EPO. The new ICT structure provides a focal point for initiating cross-cluster and cross-DG solutions to the challenges of rapidly-growing and technically diverse developments such the Internet of Things, Smart Grids, Telematics and Medical Informatics. An example of this is the setting up and maintenance of our standards databases and management of the corresponding relationships with the standards bodies, for which the expertise and
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resources of the Office play an important role. With the vast majority of the EPO’s largest applicants now coming from the ICT sector and ICT technology rapidly converging with traditional technology, the potential gains from strong, successful coordination are considerable. Therefore an ICT Committee was established to ensure a closer cooperation between departments dealing with ICT operational issues, and to promote effective consultation, harmonisation and cross-referencing of policies and practice.
With leadership for ICT issues now vested in one main ICT principal directorate, and with the creation of the ICT Committee, the Office is better placed to respond to the challenges of a rapidly-changing technological landscape and to project its services to industry. This more proactive stance and enhanced cooperation have already led to an improved dialogue with a number of major ICT applicants. In May 2015 an EPO delegation visited 5 major US applicants in ICT. The resultant exchange of information and discussion of strategic and procedural issues has allowed DG1 to further shape its services to the needs of the ICT industry. A similar mission to Japanese industry is planned for the autumn of 2015.
Further synergies and benefits arising from this rationalisation of the Office’s ICT activities are expected in 2016 and beyond. e) Areas of Competence (AoC)
AoC implementation in DG1 has progressed very successfully in the past 3 years: by the end of this year, 91% of examiners work in AoCs. Moreover, in 99% of all technical fields clear AoC plans exist so that it can be expected that soon more Clusters will reach full AoC implementation status. This new AoC landscape does not only contribute to more efficient working and knowledge sharing processes but it will certainly also facilitate the further deployment of Team Managers across DG1. f) Paid extra activities for examiners
Considerable efforts have been made to maximise the available search and examination capacity in DG1 by evaluating all investments which up to now involved examiner resources. Activities where examiners resources could have
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been replaced by external resources, directors and non-examining staff have been identified and re-staffed. For certain activities, where examiner competencies are required, opportunities to financially reward well performing examiners for so- called "extra activities” (outside the core business) have been created using the legal framework of the new career, on condition that these do not affect their production output. Accordingly, the individual contribution to these extra activities are organised such that the normal performance in terms of products and the normal working pattern is not affected.
Since the kick-off of this initiative in March this year, more than 100 so-called "work packages” have been advertised and assigned internally, corresponding to investments of some 1000 examiner days which are now being handled by a financial compensation without affecting the total production capability of DG1. For next year, based on the current planning, this new scheme will gain even more momentum.
D. PROCEDURES AND CLASSIFICATION a) Early Certainty from Search (ECFS)
On 1st July 2014 Early Certainty from Search was implemented. The aim of this new scheme is to improve legal certainty on pending patent applications by organising the workflow at examiner level in order to deliver, as early as possible in the patent grant process, the information required by the industry to assess the risks and opportunities entailed in pending applications.
Early Certainty from Search outlines are:
Issue all searches with opinion on time: this ensures that no blind spots are created in the European IP landscape. A comprehensive preliminary opinion on the patentability of applications searched by EPO is provided quickly to the applicant and the public. EPO goal is to issue European search reports and search opinion within 6 months after reception from the applicants of the application documents to be used for the search. This will guarantee issuance of the search report well before expiry of the priority year for first filings, on time for publication with the application at 18 months and 6 months after entry into the regional phase or applicant’s reply to the communication under Rule 161 EPC when EPO was not the International Searching Authority.
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Finish already started examination files before starting new cases: by setting a higher focus on completing already started examinations rather than on issuing first examination actions, EPO ensures that pendency inherent to a complex examination procedure such as the one enshrined in the EPC, is better controlled which will result in faster and more efficient examination.
Fast track examination for third parties: until July 2014 only applicants could benefit of procedural acceleration. Now third parties can also request accelerated examination by filing non anonymous and substantiated observations under Article 115 EPC.
Fast track examination for applications for which a positive reply to a search opinion has been issued as they have a very high potential to be direct grants.
The results of the new scheme are visible, and the efforts to reduce the delays, so called backlog, in dealing with these types of files mentioned above resulted in a decrease from 35.030 at the start of the year to 21.442 files at the end of July.
45K 40K 40K Priority One Backlog 40K 38K 37K 35K 35K 34K 35K 31K 29K 28K 30K 33K 33K 27K 30K 25K 25K 28K 21K 25K 20K 23K 20K 15K 18K 10K
5K
0K
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Furthermore, an improvement in timely delivery of International Search Reports from 76.3% at the start of the year to 82.9% at the end of July has been achieved.
90% ISRs 88% 86% 84% 83% 82% 82% 81% 79% 80% 78% 79% 78% 77% 77% 76% 76% 76% 74% 74% 74% 74% 72% 70%
Also very important for our applicants is the improved timeliness on accelerated examinations whereby the backlog of late files decreased from 5.528 at the start of the year to 3.285 files at the end of July.
7.000 RAEX
6.000 5.587 5.603 5.539 5.532 5.253 5.330 5.258 4.878 5.000 4.371 4.300 4.106 3.827 4.000 3.285
3.000
2.000
1.000
0
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Applications with already overdue searches on 1st July 2014 (EP second filings and Euro-PCT applications for which a supplementary European search report must be issued) were parked in a specific priority group. The goal is to treat them all as quickly as possible according to the workload constraints in the different technical fields. This backlog amounted at 73 000 files and was around 47.764 at the end of July, namely well ahead of plan.
80K 73K 72K 70K Priority four backlog 67K 70K 64K 62K 61K 58K 60K 56K 53K 52K 50K 48K 50K
40K
30K
20K
10K
0K
The feedback received from the user community is overwhelmingly positive. The effect of the Early Certainty from Search strategy on EPO timeliness is already visible as evidenced by the timeliness quality indicators published now on a quarterly basis on the EPO website. These indicators are based on twelve months rolling data which has a slowing effect on the actual improvement rate in transition period. At each meetings with users circles from all continents, EPO efforts for improving timeliness and overall pendency are praised and are considered very useful for supporting legal certainty and strengthening the European patent system.
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b) PCT Direct
On 1st November 2014 the Office in its capacity as receiving Office and International Searching Authority launched a new service, called "PCT Direct” (see Notice from the EPO dated 18 August 2014 published in OJ EPO 2014, A89).
Under PCT Direct, an applicant filing an international application claiming priority from an earlier application already searched by the EPO, will be able to react to any objections raised in the search opinion drawn up for the priority application by filing a letter ("PCT Direct letter”) containing informal comments aimed at overcoming objections raised in the search opinion established by the EPO for the priority application (EP application or national application for which the EPO established the search report and written opinion). The PCT Direct letter and any marked-up copy of the claims and/or description are submitted when filing a PCT application. This new service will simplify the assessment of the international application and enhance the value of the international search report and written opinion established by the EPO.
Till May 2015 the EPO received over 1500 applications containing the PCT-Direct letter (currently roughly 200 PCT Direct requests per month).
As of 1.07.2015 the use of the PCT Direct service will be extended to other receiving Offices. With such extension, PCT applicants who selected the EPO as ISA will be in the position to submit PCT Direct letters with their applications irrespective of the receiving Office. Such a measure will enhance equal treatment amongst PCT applicants and streamline procedures amongst receiving Offices.
The PCT-Direct scheme was very welcomed by the PCT user community. Several users organisation requested to extend the scheme to any pairs of application where the earlier and later search reports were done by the EPO. The EPO is investigating the possibility of extending the concept to users starting prosecution at EPO with a 2nd filing.
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c) Training activities for the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)
As of 1 January 2013 CPC has become the EPO’s and the USPTO’s official classification system. In April 2015 ECLA has been decommissioned, and no conversion of CPC into ECLA (and vice versa) is anymore available. Classification processes and quality continue to be constantly monitored. The EPO and USPTO kept working together to further improve the CPC system and adapt the CPC scheme and definitions to technological changes. A new bilateral endeavour is now starting with the USPTO: the design of a collaborative environment which will foster cooperation between examiners from both offices and automate many of the manual actions currently needed to amend the CPC products.
In 2013 and 2014 the EPO trained the USPTO and its contractor in more than 200 technical areas by sending trainers to the USPTO. In 2015, the training has continued and the USPTO has sent 70 examiners and classification experts to the EPO. They have been trained in their corresponding technical fields by DG1 experts. Twenty-six of them were already trained in April 2015. In 2016 exchange visits with the USPTO will mainly focus on CPC revision requests and projects.
DG1 has stopped the classification of US documents in 27 technical fields so far corresponding to 9% of the volume of US publications (rolling 6 months average). This has put at least the short term realisation of the tangible benefits for the EPO at risk, i.e. to stop circulating USPTO classified documents among EPO examiners by trusting the USPTO classification symbols.
Switzerland has recently joined the eleven EPO Member States National Offices (AT, CZ, DK, ES, FI, GB, GR, HU, NO, PT, SE) who have been using or will soon use CPC for classifying their patent applications. Half of them already provide classification data to the EPO, which can then be used for searching by EPO examiners, all Epoquenet users and the public at large via Espacenet and other EPO patent information products. The second CPC annual events took place in April 2015 in Geneva and provided these Offices as well as representatives from industry with updates on the CPC. They brought valuable feedback on the CPC system, on how to improve it further, and on the status of Offices regarding their implementation of the CPC.
The training of SIPO, KIPO, INPI Brazil, Rospatent and IMPI Mexico is well under way. SIPO already provided classification data in December 2014. INPI Brazil has already started publishing CPC symbols on its patent documents since the beginning of December 2014. The first CPC data from KIPO and INPI Brazil have been loaded in EPOQUE in July 2015. Rospatent will classify their documents into CPC as of January 2016 and will make the data available to the EPO.
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In 2014 the EPO trained at its premises more than 100 examiners and classifiers in total from INPI Brazil, JPO, KIPO, Rospatent, SIPO and the USPTO. Approximately 130 are expected to be trained in 2015 at EPO premises. Furthermore, in September and October 2015 8 EPO experts will be sent to Rospatent to train its examiners in ca. 30 fields.
In 2014-15 DG1 will have trained in total 20 JPO examiners in 20 technical areas where JPO’s examiners wish to use CPC during their searches, with a view to possibly adopt the CPC in some of these areas in the future.
These training efforts demand an investment from the EPO and measures are being taken to optimise the effectiveness of training efforts while limiting examiner involvement.
CPC will ultimately bring an easier access to the documentation published by participating offices, increased quality of the work of the EPO and thus more legal certainty for European and unitary patent rights. The EPO has taken up a key support and leadership role focused on ensuring that its classification partners, and especially the USPTO, commit to achieve our quality and timeliness classification standards. This is the best way forward to ensure that CPC is also beneficial to the EPO from the operational point of view. d) Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office
The revised Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office will enter into force in November 2015. They will be available on the EPO website as of October.
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IV. BOARDS OF APPEAL
A. DG 3 PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTION
In the first eight months of 2015, 1705 technical appeals were filed, 4,2% fewer than in the same period in 2014. The number of technical cases settled in the same period was 1554, a 2,2% increase compared to 2014. The number of appeals that were settled without a decision already reached 575 in August 2015+9.7% compared to the same period in 2014. The Legal Board of Appeal received 11 appeals and settled 12. The average duration of technical appeals in 2014 was 35.5 months (+7.3% rolling 12 months).
By the end August 2015 the Enlarged Board of Appeal had received 4 petitions for review and settled 8. It also issued two interlocutory decisions concerning allegations of suspicion of partiality. The Enlarged Board decided three referrals in the first eight months of 2015.
In G 3/14, the Enlarged Board analysed whether, and if so to what extent, the requirements of Art. 84 EPC ("Claims shall be clear and concise and be supported by the description”) may be examined in opposition and opposition appeal proceedings, in particular if there is an amended claim which is a mere combination of a granted independent claim and granted dependent claims or elements thereof. The Enlarged Board decided that in considering whether a patent as amended meets the requirements of the EPC, the claims may be examined for compliance with Art. 84 EPC only when, and then only to the extent that the amendment introduces non-compliance with Art 84 EPC.
In the consolidated cases G 2/12 and G 2/13 (Tomato II, Broccoli II) the Enlarged Board held that the exclusion of essentially biological processes for the production of plants in Art. 53(b) EPC did not have a negative effect on the allowability of product claims or product-by-process claims directed to plant or plant material (such as a fruit or plant parts) which are directly obtained and/or defined by an essentially biological process.
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Following R 19/12 the Chairman of the Enlarged Board was also objected to in two other cases: R 8/13 and R 2/14. In both cases the party concerned referred in its grounds for alleging suspected partiality to the reasoning and outcome of the decision in R 19/12. In both cases the Enlarged Board rejected the objections. In its decisions the Enlarged Board inter alia referred to the administrative measures taken after R 19/12, in particular that the Vice-President Appeals will no longer take part in the work of the MAC as a member and will not be a member of the General Consultative Committee. With respect to the remaining issues resulting from the dual role of Chairman of the Enlarged Board and VP3, the Enlarged Board provided in both cases an analysis of these issues and ways to deal with them within the current legal framework.
At present, there are two referrals pending before the Enlarged Board of Appeal. G 1/14 poses the following question: If, after expiry of the time limit under Art. 108, first sentence, EPC a notice of appeal is filed and the fee for appeal is paid, is the appeal inadmissible or is it deemed not to have been filed? G 1/15 concerns questions relating to the issue of partial priority. In the case at hand a divisional application was filed with a claim which was broader in scope than the priority application. The claim was a generalisation of an example disclosed in both the parent and in the priority application. The questions address the issue whether the novelty of the divisional is put in danger by the generalisation because entitlement to partial priority for the overlapping subject matter could be refused. Also the question whether a parent application could, in case of priority problems, become novelty destroying for the divisional is addressed. This phenomenon is referred to in recent publications as poisonous divisionals or poisonous priorities. It is expected that the referral will attract a lot of attention from the user community, as the questions relate to issues that are essential for defining filing strategies.
B. STRUCTURAL REFORM OF THE BOARDS OF APPEALS
At its meeting of March 2015 the Administrative Council gave its general support to the orientations for a structural reform of the EPO’s Boards of Appeal (BOA) outlined in document CA/16/15. The Office subsequently launched an online user consultation on the different elements of the reform. The user consultation ran from 30 April 2015 to 30 June 2015 and attracted the interest of most of the users of the European patent system thereby providing plenty of supportive and useful feedback.
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The Office received 22 comments from user associations including 9 European- wide associations, 8 representing users in Contracting States, 2 from Japanese and U.S. user associations respectively and 1 from an international user organisation. Additionally, 45 individual submissions were made by patent attorneys and 13 by in-house counsels or companies.
Together these submissions provide a comprehensive picture of the views of the users of the European patent system. The results of the consultation will be presented to the Administrative Council at the meeting of October 2015 in document CA/.../15. The comments and proposals expressed by the users will be taken into account for the purposes of the envisaged reform.
Apart from the user consultation, further work on the structural reform of the BOA is on-going. In particular, at its meeting of June 2015 the Administrative Council endorsed the transitional career provisions for BOA members (CA/49/15). The final career provisions are currently under preparation. The Office is also continuing internal consultations with the BOA on the various aspects of the structural reform.
V. INTERACTION WITH STAKEHOLDERS
A. SACEPO
Early 2015, the President appointed new members for the term of office 2015- 2017, coming from BusinessEurope and epi as well as members appointed ad personam, for the various SACEPO committees (main SACEPO and SACEPO Working Parties on Rules, Guidelines and Patent Documentation and Information (PDI)). The main SACEPO met in its new composition on 18 June 2015 for its 47th meeting. Among the numerous topics discussed at the meeting were the changes to Rules 82 and 147 EPC, Early certainty from search, IP 5 projects (PHEP, CPC, Global Dossier), substantive patent law harmonisation, PCT matters, reform of DG3 and progress with the implementation of the unitary patent.
A meeting of the SACEPO Working Party on Rules took place on 31 March 2015, with focus on the proposals to amend Rules 46, 82 and 147 EPC. A further meeting is planned for November 2015. Users in the area of Patent Documentation and Information were also convened in March and received updates on the EPO's projects and services and provided valuable feedback.
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B. PARTNERSHIP FOR QUALITY
For many years, the EPO has been holding dedicated meetings, the so called "Partnership for quality” meetings with European and American user organisations (epi, Business Europe, AIPLA) who constitute the largest applicant regions for the EPO. In 2012, the EPO commenced "Partnership for quality” meetings also with Japanese users. In November 2014, Partnership for quality meetings were, for the first time, held in China and Korea. The next quality meetings in China and Korea are foreseen in November 2015.
An extended EPO initiative in 2015 is to meet direct with US and Japanese companies (applicants) at higher level. An EPO mission to the US took place at the end of May 2015 and a similar mission to Japan is foreseen for November 2015. Objectives are to enter into direct discussions with major EPO applicants in these regions in order to brief on recent developments at the EPO and to receive feedback on the EPO.
VI. IT AND AUTOMATION PROJECTS
A. ITR – DELIVERIES FOR EXAMINERS
The roll out of deliveries from the IT roadmap has continued as set out in CA/46/14. In particular, the "Auto Re- and Pre-classification services" which were released in May 2015 support examiners in semi-automatically reclassifying documents and support the pre-classification team taking over manual pre- classification activities in some technical areas.
Other deliveries include updated tools for examiners such as improved versions of the search system ANSERA supporting search for chemical compounds or acronyms thanks to a new index that takes into account special and upper/lower case characters. The overall performance has also continued to be increase in terms of search speed and responsiveness.
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The pre-search environment is also being improved to allow examiners to efficiently exploit automated search results at the initial phase of the search with new and enhanced preparations. A tender is also now running for a platform for automatically enriching the prior art collection with additional metadata while the Office is also testing a number of new ranking methodologies.
The Office also improved its Management Information support to DG1 Directors, Team Managers and Examiners through the deployment of an integrated browser- based reporting system called "Landing Page” providing strategic and operational information. All KPIs used are aligned with the Office strategic goals: efficiency, quality and support of Early Certainty from Search. We are in the delivery phase of the Electronic Dossier for Search, the rollout plan will depend on the acceptance tests foreseen in the autumn.
For support staff and external users, the main changes have been in the introduction of PCT automatic debiting and legal updates on April 1st and July 1st and the addition of Morocco as a validation state. The preparations for UNIP have continued in order to be ready well in advance of the first filings expected in 2016. These include not only the filing and fee payments but also the later processing, publications and related workflows.
The service on Espacenet and the European Register has been improved with new functionality called the "EPO Global Dossier”. Users are now able to access file wrapper information for dossiers being processed at the JPO, USPTO, SIPO and KIPO by clicking on the links in Espacenet or the European Patent Register.
B. CMS – NEW SYSTEM INTEGRATOR
The 2014 plan for implementation of the CMS Joint Work Package could not be executed as foreseen due to difficulties encountered by the Main Supplier. The EPO has therefore looked for alternative solutions with minimum impact on the
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overall plan. This lead to the decision to modify the way IM is delivering IT redefining the role of IM taking the lead and responsibility of the full service delivery end to end. This reduces the dependence of the EPO on a single supplier but at the same time provides strategic incentives to its suppliers to invest in supporting EPO’s transformation.
The EPO has selected a System Integrator (SI) through a procurement process, to support the implementation the Patent Grant Process on the CMS. It is Sopra- Steria, leader in the field of system integration, mostly present in UK, France and Benelux. This new SI is responsible for bringing architecture, delivery and systems integration capacity and capability to the EPO. It will integrate products from different so called Tower Suppliers.
For the time being the former supplier continues to operate the current CMS Filing system as a Tower Supplier. The EPO is working on the transition from the current supplier to the new System Integrator and is preparing an updated overall plan for the delivery of the CMS Joint Work Package. The impact on other projects of the re-engineered patent grant process is being evaluated and the planning adapted accordingly.
C. NEW AUTOMATION GOVERNANCE
The IT Roadmap was at the beginning of the year at a turning point where both old systems and new systems had to be governed under the same governance to allow optimisation of investments and manage conflict of resources. A new single automation governance covering ITR investments and maintenance of both the Patent Grant Process and Knowledge Management and Search areas has therefore been put in place since beginning of 2015.
This new governance:
reinforces the role of the businesses in the governance through the whole automation management : the prioritisation of the business demand at a strategic level, the design of the overall solution, the acceptance and the release and change management
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supports the harmonisation between the Patent Grant Process and Knowledge Management and Search services.
reinforces the alignment between the development of new functionalities on the new systems and the changes and maintenances activities required on the legacy systems until the full migration to the new system and decommissioning of the legacy systems
reinforces the role of IM in the operational management and the delivery of the Roadmap.
The new automation governance will be extended to the IT infrastructure and security roadmaps by the end of this year. The other areas needs in automation, known as Corporate Area, are aligning their practices to the new governance, to be eventually merged into one automation governance in the future.
D. IT SECURITY
Cybersecurity
The cybersecurity stream of the Security Roadmap has implemented several measures required by the projects of the IT Roadmap:
a web application firewall has been added to our web servers to protect us against application-level attacks.
a dual virus scan mechanism has been added to our web-form filing service.
a vulnerability scan has been performed on CMS.
a full vulnerability assessment of the IT infrastructure has been performed by a third party. The vulnerabilities found are being fixed in a project that started in Q2 2015.
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ISO 27001 certification
The new version of ISO 27001 focuses more strongly on processes and the associated documentation. EPO has standardised the risk assessment and security requirements processes. All related documentation has been standardised according to ISO 27001 and is actively used.
Modernised identity and access management
For our new web-form filing service, a user self-registration mechanism has been implemented, enabling applicants to deliver their patent application to the EPO without intervention from an EPO employee.
Business continuity
At the beginning of 2014, an external company reviewed our crisis management processes against industry best practices. The gaps identified are being closed. The IM executive board and IM managers have run a crisis management exercise. Our IT crisis management processes are ISO 27001-compliant.
Security awareness
A security awareness campaign has been launched. This campaign includes three well-attended town hall sessions in The Hague. On average there are about 400 attendees. In addition, the sessions are broadcast Office-wide to desktops with live video broadcasts. The topics are "Remote attack using a USB stick", "Information theft via mobile devices" and "Physical security". In addition, three mandatory online training modules on security aspects have been developed and followed by all staff.
E. OTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN AUTOMATION
In the scope of the modernisation of the IT infrastructure an important milestone has been accomplished, the engine and the databases of Epoque and Epoquenet have been fully migrated to open systems.
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VII. BUILDINGS AND PROCUREMENT
A. NEW MAIN THE HAGUE
Demolition of parts of the Hinge building and old Main which were located in the construction area, together with the sheet piling for the construction pit and its excavation are completed. The construction of the energy building which now provides the power supply for the whole site is also achieved. In parallel the drilling of some 1200 piles for the foundation was started, to be finished end of September. At present, the construction works for the waterproof floor slab and the basement are on-going and should be finished in December which would allow for the steel construction to commence, with a speed of 1 floor every 6 days.
B. OTHER BUILDING PROJECTS
In Munich, the renting of the Capitellum building has been terminated on 31 March 2015, three months ahead of the original plan of 30 June 2015. This enabled the EPO to save the three last months of rent costs. Preparatory activities for the enhanced security project in the PschorrHöfe complex are on-going. The building works project in Vienna was completed in May 2015. The new entrance hall and new access road enhance the building significantly for all users.
C. CENTRAL PROCUREMENT
2015 is a transition year for Central Procurement. Three Procurement Teams, now aligned to the corresponding business units (IT, Building, Specialists), are gradually adjusting their resources to the units’ procurement needs. Each team has developed a procurement plan for each business unit and can now provide better service due to the enhanced planning capabilities.
In the area of procurement tools, progress has been made on two fronts:
(1) The e-Tender tool has now completed the final production tests and is being piloted with a selected number of tender procedures.
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(2) The Single Point of Entry, a web based tool, has similarly completed the phase for final production tests. Once fully deployed, this tool will allow the tracking of a procurement dossier from request to delivery, resulting in a fully transparent process.
A series of improvements addressing all aspects of the procurement process has been developed, specifically the interfaces to the business units, Finance and Legal Services, and to the external market. Consequently some adjustments to our procurement operating rules, enshrined in the EPO Financial Regulations and Tender Guidelines, will be proposed to the BFC/AC. The improvements aim at a more efficient process by realigning the responsibilities between departments, proposing new procurement paths (e.g. procedures that allow more flexibility to negotiate with suppliers), leading to more competition and therefore to better procurement, both technically and economically.
VIII. QUALITY
The Quality Roadmap continues its steady implementation: Preparations for the extension of the ISO 9001 based QMS to Patent Information are being finalised; an internal audit carried out in August confirmed closure of few gaps detected in May. Simultaneously, the Office is preparing itself for the first surveillance audit of our Patent Granting Process by the external auditors in October.
The Office is also following very closely external inputs and surveys. The latest benchmarking survey published by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) in May 2015 magazine has found that the EPO is the leading of the biggest IP offices in the world for both quality of patents issued and the level of service offered.
There was a perceived progress from the users over the last years which, depending upon the group surveyed, ranked patents issued by the EPO as ‘excellent’, ‘very good’ or ‘good’ for up to 87% of respondents. Recent in-house user satisfaction surveys confirm the finding. Legal certainty and service remain the main drivers of the EPO’s quality policy.
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IX. HUMAN RESOURCES
A. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW PERFORMANCE AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
HR activities continue to focus on the implementation of the New Career and Performance Management reform approved by the Administrative Council in December 2014. Concrete transposition to the new single spine salary scale of staff which entered the Office before 1st January 2015 took place on 1 July 2015. EPO staff had been informed of their new grade and step through individual transposition letters. The first payroll based on the new salary scales was successfully conducted end of July.
The tools to meet the needs of the reformed career system, e.g. by introducing an objectives setting process in the performance management tool have been adapted. Objectives have meanwhile been set in all DGs, were cascaded down to the individual staff member level and recorded in the electronic tool. Intermediate review meetings between staff members and line managers have taken place between May and July 2015 to monitor progress on the agreed objectives (90% have been conducted).
A competency framework has been developed to provide a clear indication of the competencies required for the different roles in the Office. The competencies are defined in job profiles (approximately 150) which have been published and assigned to all posts at the EPO (with exception of DG3). The profiles and competencies are also made available in the reporting tool to allow managers to assess the competencies of staff in the course of the appraisal. Managers have been trained in the competency assessment and e-learning modules were developed and provided to staff. Line managers have carried out the first competency assessment
The new career system also entails changes in the reward structure, with step advancement, promotions and rewards depending on performance and the availability of the annual budget. Workflows are being established for the new request procedure and a tool is being developed to support managers in their budget decisions. The reward process will start in Q3 upon distribution of the budget envelope among the DGs. A dedicated training for line managers is on- going.
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Furthermore, a functional allowance is introduced under the new system for duties involving specific constraints or demands. The request process is being set up and the functional allowance will become effective as of 01.07.2015.
Intensive actions of communication (individual letters to all staff members, frequently asked questions, HR matters, kits of communication for managers) and training sessions (3 types of training compulsory for all managers and four e- learning modules on objective setting, competencies, roles and responsibilities and the usage of the tool have been made available to all staff ) as well as a continuous support on the use of the new performance system and the job profiles provided to managers have accompanied the change in performance management and new career system.
The completion of the objective setting for 2015 is a very important milestone in the introduction of the new performance management system and was completed by the end of March.
Through the cascading of the objectives from the strategic to the individual level, each staff member can see his contribution to the performance and success of the Office. The first effects of the reform have been translated in a significant increase of production.
The New Career System includes a managerial and a technical career path. Over the next five years up to 150 senior experts are to be recruited. Senior Experts will be supported in their new role and responsibilities with appropriate training. At the same time, a clear managerial career path is being developed in DG1 with the creation of team managers. The first year pilot of the team manager programme was successfully rolled-out and the team manager programme will continue. In total, 300 team managers will be appointed in DG1 over the next 5 years. They will contribute to increase the performance management, the quality and the communication with the teams while maintaining their production contributions. A training concept for the development of newly appointed team managers has been developed in collaboration with DG1.
B. HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Since 2012, several measures have been implemented to improve the well-being in the Office:
the reinforcement of the contact with staff members having difficult health situation,
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the early contact in case of sick-leave between staff member and line manager,
a mandatory medical examination after 30 days of cumulated sick-leave for offering the support of the occupational health service a focus on the reintegration process after sick-leave a review and optimization of the medical and health related workflows has been started as well as raising the awareness on health matters like the introduction of sick-leave statistics and the delivering of several trainings like Health management.
In March the Administrative Council approved the sick leave and incapacity reform which entered into force on 1 April 2015 (CA/D 2/15). The main objective of this reform is to move from a disability benefit culture to an employment integration culture. To this end, a comprehensive framework based on early prevention of incapacity, focusing on health recovery, return to work and maintenance of the employment link has been introduced. The three cornerstones of the reform are the introduction of a partial and temporary incapacity, the revision of the regulations governing absences on medical grounds and streamlining of the medical procedure.
To facilitate the introduction of the new scheme, a set of transitional rules allows a progressive and smooth transition to the new system starting from the day of the entry into force (1 April 2015).
For employees already on sick leave or extended sick leave, the first effects of the reform will occur in October 2015 at the earliest, April 2016 for the first cases of incapacity. As for invalidity allowance recipients, they will be granted a retirement pension for health reasons as from 1 January 2016. The reform is accompanied by intensive communication campaign, both at collective and individual levels, and training measures, as well as simplification of the workflow.
The first medical opinions delivered by external medical practitioners replacing the former medical committees have already taken place, without particular difficulty. The purpose of this revised procedure was to address the identified current shortcomings (long duration of the proceedings, potential conflicts of interest, absence of a clear medical arbitration process) by introducing a streamlined, independent and objective system based on medical advices.
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Furthermore, in July 2015, the Office has launched a tender for an Occupational Health and Safety Risk Assessment (OHSRA) office-wide. Following European best practices, the OSHRA should help to identify and analyse potential hazards arising from the existing work environment and work organisation, and to assess their respective risks to the safety, health and well-being of EPO staff. The risk assessment exercise should also determine whether existing and planned systems are adequate for eliminating existing hazards or control risks. The results will be used to formulate recommendations and determine what actions need to be taken. The provider is expected to be mandated in November 2015 and the risk assessment to be finalized by June 2016.
The staff representation is closely associated, together with the professionals of safety and security, to the reflection and the work on risk assessment within the Central Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee.
To ensure consistency and alignment after the different changes introduced in the Health and Safety area in the last years, the Office has started in April 2015 an Health and Safety transformation project, which aim is to propose a new Health and Safety Policy, a new organisation of the Health and Safety services as well as the adapted workflows for health and safety. By adapting the Health and Safety framework, the Office aims at improving the support provided to the staff members and the line managers in the Office.
C. SOCIAL DIALOGUE
In the scope of the call for a renewed social dialogue with the unions initiated by the President of the Office and supported by the Administrative Council, a first tri- partite kick-off meeting took place on 22 April 2015. It constituted a start for concrete discussions on the formal recognition of the unions between union officials (SUEPO and FFPE) and Office's representatives.
Two meetings at working group level took place on 11 and 20 May and gave the parties the opportunity to exchange views, in an open and constructive atmosphere, on the concrete implications and modalities of the recognition of unions in the EPO legal framework and the role they can play as social partners. The definition of Framework Agreement as well as the scope of the concertation / negotiation constitutes the main topics on the agenda of discussions.
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The next round table meeting at tri-partite level was held on 28 May 2015 with the intention of reviewing the findings of the working group, and considering next steps. It was decided that the working group would continue to work in the coming months in order to agree on a Memorandum of Understanding, which will specify the modalities under which the trade unions will play their role in the EPO social dialogue.
Concrete proposals for a Memorandum of Understanding have been sent to the Unions as a basis for the working level discussions. They were discussed during the two meetings at working level which were held on 29 June and 10 July and which the SUEPO decided not attend. Another meeting at working level took place on 16 September before the next tri-partite meeting led by the President of the Office and the Chairman of the Administrative Council.
D. TRANSPARENCY ON WORKING CONDITIONS: PUBLICATION OF THE SERVICE REGULATIONS ON THE EPO WEBSITE
In its continuous commitment in extending its approach to transparency, and following established common practice in other international organisations, the Office will provide access to the rules governing staff and working conditions at the Office in publishing by the end of September the Service Regulations for permanent employees of the Office on the EPO website. In completion, the Office will also publish three circulars, which have not been adopted by the Administrative Council, Circular 341 on prevention against harassment and the resolution of conflicts at the EPO, circular 342 dedicated to investigations at the EPO (fight against fraud) and the guidelines on data protection.
The publication of the Service regulations will accompany the EPO’s social report, which already provides to the public facts and figures on staff, working conditions and welfare at the EPO. In terms of transparency, the Office goes a step further than the existing practices established by other major organizations which do not systematically publish the Implementing rules.
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X. EPN
A. CO-OPERATION WITH MEMBER STATES
At the end of this year, the first implementation cycle of the Co-operation Roadmap will finish. The agreement concluded in Bratislava in 2011 for the initial period 2012-2015 (CA/85/11), has proven a great success. The core element of the Roadmap, the introduction of joint working plans, the so-called Bilateral Co- operation Plans (BCPs), has sparked large interest among the Member States.
Until now, 29 Member States and the two Extension States have defined and adopted BCPs which we jointly developed. More than 200 individual projects and activities are running in the three core areas training, patent-related IT services and tools and patent information services and awareness.
The BCPs have brought sensible advantages for all parties concerned, in particular a better coordination of activities and an effective management of projects of common interest. As a large number of BCPs are already nearing the end of their term the Office is in talks with the Member States concerned. There is a unanimous consent among the partners that new BCPs should be signed by revising some details and including new projects. This means that both the EPO and the Member States will have a planning horizon for joint projects and activities until the end of 2018.
The regular multilateral and bilateral meetings with the Member States can be considered very conducive to the high level of co-operation already reached. This year, the Office continued the intensive dialogue through the lead events Info Day in Munich and Annual meeting on Co-operation in Riga not only to exchange about the implementation status and quality of existing projects, but also to prepare the future of co-operation, i.e. envisage new projects. Moreover, all participants used these opportunities to inform each other about recent developments and to share best practices. In addition, the Office organised technical EPN events in Vienna to discuss future developments on the Federated European Patent Register, and in Vilnius to present the Espacenet New pilot. As is customary the events abroad have been supported by the respective national offices.
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In 2015, one recent technical project, Data Acquisition based on Quality at Source, has entered the execution phase. While a first group of six national offices acted as pilots in the first half of this year, the second group of six offices embarked on the project in July. The clear focus of the project is on collecting full-text data, thus harmonising the front file data and completing the back file data.
Another major technical project, the Federated European Patent Register which is to display the legal status data supplied by the national offices for a selected file in a consolidated table, has reached phase 2: the Federated Display in EP Register. In February the web service of phase 2 as proof of concept was launched. Until now, five offices have started the production while three other offices are in integration testing. Further offices will be added in phase 2 progressively.
The proliferation of the CPC system in the Member States also makes considerable progress. Three more national offices have announced that they start classifying in the CPC this year. In total, 11 national offices already classify in the CPC.
The training projects under the Co-operation Roadmap enjoy further popularity. The Discussion Platform for Exchange on Patent Procedures is organised in eight Member States this year while in 2014, six national offices participated. The event on a specific technical field is split into two days: the first day conduces to the exchange between EPO and a Member State’s examiners in order to improve the mutual understanding and harmonise working procedures; the second day addresses attorneys and user groups who aim at understanding the patent practices and procedures in the selected technical field.
The Language training programme is also expanding: almost half of the national offices take part in the project. This rate also holds good for the Candidate Support Project (CSP) which eventually aims at achieving a higher number of EQE- qualified patent attorneys in Member States with five or less professional representatives. In September the third training round started with 12 trainees, increasing the total number of candidates to 81.
Patent Translate has been taken from the list of patent information services and awareness projects since it entered into the regular maintenance mechanism this year. By all means, patent corpora continue to be collected in order to ensure a constant improvement of the translation quality.
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After the pilot some years ago, the IP pre-diagnosis project has been revived. Six Member States are adopting this advisory tool to support SMEs in their innovation management.
Other important projects such as Espacenet New and the follow-up to re-orienting the PATLIB centres either have already started up or are in preparation.
Altogether, the continuous implementation of the Co-operation Roadmap has a lasting positive effect on our collaboration within the EPN and at the same time, generates again and again tangible benefits for the users of the European patent system.
B. EUROPEAN PATENT ACADEMY a) Institutional Strengthening
Co-operation roadmap-based training, dedicated to NPO staff, was implemented in close co-operation with the NPOs and in accordance with the work plan as approved by the Academy Supervisory Board. Over the reporting period, 1575 seats were offered and used by NPOs and related institutions.
Other recent highlights include: the IP executive week, together with OHIM, in Alicante in July, gathering 72 management staff of NPOs from Europe and all over the world; a seminar in Rome on "the European patent system from filing to grant”, providing with an unique holistic overview of the EPO work for NPO examiners and lawyers; and an advanced seminar about EpoqueNet and its latest improvements, for a faster and more performing search by the participating NPOs. b) Judicial Training
In June 2015, six national judges participated in the fourth judicial internship programme at the EPO Boards of Appeal. They spent one month at the EPO, starting with an intensive introduction to patentability and followed by three weeks with a technical board of appeal. This programme provides national judges with an opportunity to gain an in-depth insight into validity aspects and the development of case law at the boards of appeal.
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c) Innovation Support
Over 140 patent search professionals from thirty countries attended the 27th edition of Search Matters. The event took place in Munich for the first time, and attendance was up again by nearly 20%. Based on the feedback received, Search Matters continues to provide real benefits by improving the quality of searches, and hence the quality of incoming applications, from many of EPO’s major patent applicants. On offer were: six plenary lectures and six workshop sessions, with 23 workshops to choose from, as well as one-to-one sessions with examiners. Recordings of lectures and main workshops are available to the public as free eLearning modules.
The IP Teaching Kit, produced by the European Patent Academy and the OHIM, was finalised. Nearly 900 pages were published this year and lecturers have now a library of about 1 600 pages at their disposal for teaching about the different forms of IP, their use and search in databases. Dissemination of the IP Teaching Kit started in 2014 and has continued in 2015. d) e-learning
The e-learning offer of the Academy in 2015 has served about 800 registered participants in 12 tutored courses, with an emphasis on examiners' core activities, offered to patent offices of the EPO member states and on the EQE pre- examination on-line course, the latter open to the CSP candidates. The on-line courses for EpoqueNet have been redesigned towards a more hands-on oriented experience for intermediate and advanced level. Different public self-paced courses were opened in 2015 to self-registration, and now serve as a pre-requisite for the Pan-European Seal programme.
On-line modules have been developed for the Search Matters event and the Tegernsee Symposium, as well as for the new version of the Y02/Y04 classification systems and for post-grant renewal fees procedures. There was also an update to the modules based on the Guide for Applicants.
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C. CO-OPERATION WITH OHIM
Beside the comprehensive co-operation with the Member States, the EPO has been closely liaising with OHIM since some years. One of the projects which we jointly carry out is the so-called Pan-European Seal professional Traineeship Programme. This project aims at bridging academia and the IP labour market. This week, the first 36 university graduates began their year-long, paid traineeship under the Pan-European Seal in our premises. The project also includes high-end IP professional training at universities as well as online training tools.
D. REPRESENTATION BEFORE THE EPO
In 2015, 535 candidates passed the European qualifying examination (EQE) pursuant to Article 14(1) of the Regulation on the European qualifying examination (REE). This is an increase of 24% compared to 2014. The participation and results of the 2015 pre-examination remain in line with previous years. The numbers confirm the expected steady stream of candidates entering the EQE and striving to become a professional representative before the EPO.
With nearly 11400 entries at the end of June 2015, the number of registrations on the List of professional representatives remains constant in comparison to last year (0.6% increase). However this figure does not yet reflect the relatively high number of successful candidates of the current European qualifying examination (535) as the proceedings for registration in the List of professional representatives only started on the cut-off date for these statistics (31st July).
At present the ratio of professional representatives registered pursuant to the transitional provisions is currently almost 21% of the total number of registered professional representatives, which means that over 79% of professional representatives on the List, has passed the European qualifying examination. The overall number of actions dealt with by the Legal Division in respect of the List of professional representatives steadily increased and reached, in absolute terms, a total of 1676 in the first half of 2015.
The stock of general authorisations filed by parties to proceedings before the EPO and administered by the Legal Division exceeded the 60 000 mark. The work to be performed in this respect remained at a constant high level. The number of registered associations of professional representatives under Rule 152 (11) EPC amounted to 560 on 30 June 2015, which represents an increase of nearly 10% over the previous year and shows the recognised attractiveness of this instrument enabling professional representatives to benefit from the legal advantages offered by it.
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E. EUROPEAN PATENT REGISTER
The Legal Division experienced an increase in the number of cases concerning registration of transfers of patent applications or patents which reinforced the general tendency of this development. During the period under consideration (January until June 2015) cases referring to ca. 17 500 applications or patents were dealt with by the Legal Division whereas ca. 16 200 cases were completed during the whole year of 2014.
F. PATENT INFORMATION
In the field of patent information, the major breakthrough of the year so far, was the extension of the Office's Global Dossier service to Japanese, Korean and United States patent applications. This service now offers access from the European Patent Register – and Espacenet – to the file wrappers of all partner IP5 offices, and delivers Chinese, Japanese and Korean patent application files in their original language as well as machine-translated versions in English.
A second important development took place on 30 April 2015 and also involved the European Patent Register – it was the launch of the Federated Register. The new service brings together information on the post-grant phase for European patents. The data for this is scattered across the national patent registers of our member states, and the concept of the Federated Register is to collect this data "on the fly" and to display it in a simple overview table. So far, at the proof-of- concept stage, Finland, Luxembourg, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia are on board. Other offices are set to follow.
With respect to the Office's databases, we were pleased to announce in March 2015, that the INPADOC worldwide legal status database now included legal status data from Mexico.
XI. EPO AS A GLOBAL PLAYER
A. INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
At the bilateral EPO-WIPO Heads meeting on 18 February 2015 at the EPO in Munich, EPO and WIPO renewed their MoU on bilateral cooperation for a further term of 3 years, namely 2015-2017. The two organisations agreed to enhance their cooperation in the field of PCT and to work together in promoting the principle of barrier-free exchange of patent information for the benefit of the global patent system and its users. This was followed by Deputy Head and working level meetings on 27 April 2015, to support implementation of the 2015 EPO-WIPO Annual Work Plan.
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The EPO has continued to promote its pioneering approach to patents and standards, fostering cooperation with various standards organisations, such as the European standards organisations ETSI and CEN-CENELEC, as well as with the European Commission. This included a contribution to the Commission’s public consultation on patents and standards, to help promote the potential synergy of the patent and standards development systems in Europe to support in particular the convergence of information and communication technologies (ICT) into a wide range of new technological developments. The text of a new agreement with ISO was agreed at working level and is likely to be signed before the end of the year.
B. BILATERAL RELATIONS
Since March 2015, the number of countries for which patent protection can be obtained with a single European patent application, has expanded by a non- European state: Morocco. The Moldavian parliament ratified the respective validation law to the agreement with the country at the end of July, so that this new possibility can be offered to the users as from 1st November 2015 onwards. The ratification in Tunisia may be expected in the coming months. Initial talks on the merits of a validation scheme have taken place with other countries and organisations.
In Asia, after signing the first-ever co-operation agreement with India last year, a multitude of events on different topics take place on site. Between June and November, roving seminars on EPO tools and services are scheduled in different cities, exchange best practices in search and examination with the Indian office and co-host a high-level conference on research, innovation and IPR among others.
The co-operation with China, in contrast, is several decades old. On 8 October 2015, with an international symposium in Lyon, SIPO and EPO celebrated the 30th anniversary of this partnership. The event which placed emphasis on the management of IP rights in China attracted high-level speakers as well as a broad audience from industry and law firms. An anniversary publication on the achievements of this co-operation was jointly presented at the symposium and is being distributed to your offices and other stakeholders. The co-operation with China remains a vital one: the SIPO is well advancing with classifying in the CPC. Moreover, we came along with a joint project on metrics and quality.
The Korean Office is also very dedicated to classify in the CPC what is reflected in the proceeding training events which we organise. The EPO has joined the initiative of the KIPO with regard to linked patent data and the re-distribution of third-party patent publications.
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In Latin America, the co-operation activities make steady progress, with some focus on Brazil and Mexico. While a considerable number of CPC training events are held at and for the Brazilian Office this year, the collaboration with the Mexican Office is expanding to new areas what was also evidenced by the visit of the IMPI’s Director General to the EPO in July. Apart from the CPC training, we have run a seminar on patentability of medical uses what may impact the Mexican Patent Law in the long term, and we have held another one on re-using work products in the work of examiners.
C. IP5 COOPERATION
The IP5 Heads of Office met for the eighth time on 22 May 2015 in Suzhou, China, where they discussed next steps of IP5 cooperation, and reaffirmed the IP5 mission of providing improved services for users and the public.
Global Dossier: The EPO was the first to implement a Global Dossier component with the EPO’s Global Dossier file wrapper viewer in the European Patent Register (in June 2014) and in Espacenet (in October 2014). In April 2015, coverage was extended to KIPO and JPO file wrappers.
Since June 2015, the USPTO data have also been incorporated thus completing the EPO’s Global Dossier file wrapper service. Regarding next steps, a decision was taken by the IP5 Heads in Suzhou to prepare the ground work for a possible further expansion of the Global Dossier to encompass alerting, legal status, applicants’ name harmonisation, text based documents and, finally, some first steps making applicants' administrative requests through one office rather than at each office individually.
Procedural patent harmonisation: With some 300 000 applications per year being cross-filed at two or more IP5 Offices, harmonisation of the practices and procedures among the five offices would mean considerable savings for applicants, enhance work-sharing between the IP5 offices and contribute to a significant increase in examination capacity.
Since 2014, the Patent Harmonisation Experts Panel (PHEP, a technical body of the IP5) has been working on three topics of procedural harmonisation with a view to aligning their practices as best as possible. These topics are unity of invention, citation of prior art and written description/sufficiency of disclosure. At the meeting in Suzhou, the IP5 Heads endorsed reports outlining the relevant practices of the IP5 offices regarding unity of invention and citation of prior art and a list of terminology on written description/sufficiency of disclosure. These reports have been made available on the IP5 website and the offices have invited comments from users.
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Unity of invention: The IP5 Heads of Office and the users acknowledged the benefits of promoting the harmonisation of practices in respect of unity of invention. In terms of next steps, however, the scope of the exercise has been limited to international applications and in particular to the consistent application and better implementation of the unity of invention standard embedded in the PCT. This has been necessary since the USPTO has been unable to commit to the abandonment of its national restriction practice and the application of the PCT unity of invention standard to all applications.
Citation of prior art: Future issues to be addressed in this area of work concern the development of a common citation form potentially outside the application body and the implementation of an IT based solution facilitating the electronic exchange of citation data.
Written description/sufficiency of disclosure: The IP5 Offices recognise the difficulties in developing a manageable work plan for written description / sufficiency of disclosure which is not least due to the large number and the high complexity of the topics involved. A detailed plan for a case study will be further explored at working level.
Focus on users’ needs: On 21 May 2015, the IP5 Heads of Office met with representatives of industry associations from the IP5 regions for the fourth time. Users commended the IP5 Offices for the implementation of the first Global Dossier services with respect to file wrapper information. Regarding procedural harmonisation, users greatly welcomed the IP5’s progress reports and commitment to align their practices and procedures .Ever since the EPO first initiated regular consultations with the user associations of the IP5 regions in 2012, the IP5 offices have remained committed to a strong focus on users’ needs as well as greater transparency of the IP5 cooperation process. The next high- level IP5 meetings will be hosted by the JPO in Japan in 2016.
IP5 Patent Prosecution Highway (IP5 PPH) pilot: The IP5 PPH pilot programme was launched on 6 January 2014. The scheme which goes back to a proposal developed by the EPO enables applicants to request the PPH on the basis of both PCT as well as national work products. In practical terms European applicants can access accelerated processing in the other IP5 Offices on the basis of a work product which contains patentable claims and has been established by the EPO. Participation in the office’s various PPH schemes with the IP5 Offices remains fairly low with 6057 requests received between the start of the first bilateral PPH pilot programme with the USPTO in 2008 and June 2015. The largest user of the PPH before the EPO is the JPO with 3 500 requests both for PCT and national work products. The USPTO is the second largest user with slightly less than 2 200 such requests. In terms of their distribution among the various technical fields (WIPO IPC technology sector) most of the requests have been filed in: Electrical Engineering (36.8%), Mechanical Engineering (24.6%) and Chemistry (19.5%).
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IP5 Statistics: In May 2015, the IP5 Offices published a preliminary report with selected key statistical data covering overall trends at the IP5 level. The IP5 Offices reported a growth in patent filings in 2014, with altogether 2.3 million patent applications filed, an increase of 5.5% compared to 2013. Altogether the IP5 Offices granted 955 400 patents in 2014, a slight decrease of 0.1% compared to 2013. The full IP5 Statistics Report with final figures for 2014 will be released at the end of 2015.
D. TRILATERAL COOPERATION
The 33rd Trilateral Conference and a Trilateral User Meeting hosted by the JPO took place in Yokohama, Japan on 3 and 4 March 2015. The Trilateral Offices and industry representatives from the three regions had an exchange on a variety of patent harmonisation topics including the work in the B+ Group Subgroup and the work on procedural patent harmonisation within the IP5.
Trilateral cooperation has become the platform for coordinating patent harmonisation issues with industry. Trilateral Industry has been working on a substantial patent harmonisation draft proposal which was shared with the IP5 Offices at the occasion of the IP5 Heads of Office meeting in Suzhou, China in May 2015.
E. COOPERATIVE PATENT CLASSIFICATION
In 2015 the CPC remained high on the agenda of our cooperation activities in view of its importance for the quality of EPO search products and for our efficiency, in particular when it comes to retrieving Asian prior art. CPC classification data for Chinese and Korean publications are now incorporated into EPO systems on a regular basis and made available to examiners via EPOQUE and to the public via Espacenet. The number of national offices participating in the CPC endeavour grew further in 2015 amongst EPO member states with the offices of Portugal, Norway and Switzerland deciding to classify their publications in the CPC. Outside Europe, IMPI Mexico took a commitment with the CPC via the signature of an MoU in July. There are now 19 patent offices around the world, including the EPO and the USPTO, who classify in the CPC. Others might still join in the future. We continue working with our partners from the USPTO to more efficiently manage the CPC via increased automation and tighter collaboration between our examiners.
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F. STRENGTHENING THE PCT
Within the context of its PCT strategy, the Office further strengthened its services to PCT applicants and developed its cooperation with WIPO in the last months.
In particular, since 1 April 2015, the Automatic Debiting Account system may be used for the payment of PCT fees at the EPO. On 1 July, all PCT online filing tools have been updated to provide for that option. Also, after the success of the new "PCT Direct” service launched last November with the EPO acting as receiving Office, this service has been extended world-wide on 1 July so that applicants filing with other receiving Offices and selecting the EPO as ISA could submit PCT Direct letters too.
All PCT online filing tools have been updated to provide for a specific box allowing applicants to submit PCT Direct letters with their applications. This service offers a more efficient treatment of the application during the international phase when priority from an earlier application searched by the EPO is claimed. It is not subject to any fee but it is triggered only if the applicable formal requirements are met.
Work is still on-going on other user-oriented projects such as the extension of ePCT services at the EPO acting as receiving Office to allow the filing of subsequent documents. At present, applicants may already use ePCT to file international applications and demands for international preliminary examinations at the EPO.
Work is also on-going to make the PCT system more efficient. For instance, in the framework of the EPO-WIPO bilateral cooperation, the "PCT Paperless” project was launched on 1 July for a 1-year pilot programme with a limited group of receiving Offices. Under that concept, also known as eSearch Copy, PCT applications are transmitted by WIPO in electronic form to the EPO acting as ISA. If successful, the new concept will come into production with the pilot receiving Offices and any other receiving Offices complying with the necessary quality requirements. These Offices would no longer need to print and send search copies to the EPO via surface mail.
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Finally, the Office continues to strongly support the development of the PCT as the most efficient work-sharing platform. With this objective in mind, the EPO co- sponsored with KIPO a proposal to introduce a system whereby a receiving Office would provide to the competent ISA any earlier search and classification results available with it. Receiving Offices will have the possibility to opt out when their national laws provide for applicant’s consent before the transmission of unpublished patent information to third parties. However, the EPO is confident that eventually most receiving Offices will cooperate in view of the expected benefits for the PCT system, namely improving further the quality and timeliness of PCT search reports. The proposal was endorsed by the PCT Working Group in May 2015 and it will be submitted for adoption at the next PCT Assembly in October 2015.
G. SUBSTANTIVE PATENT LAW HARMONISATION
The B+ Sub-Group held its second meeting in London on 10 April 2015. The Group’s "Objectives and Principles Paper” drawn up by the Chair on the basis of comments made by the delegations, was widely circulated to members of the Group B+ and user organisations throughout the B+ membership in May 2015. On the basis of the responses to this paper, a further paper was drawn up by the Chair in time for the Group B+ plenary meeting in Geneva, which took place on 6 October 2015. At the Group B+ plenary meeting, decisions as to next steps were taken.
Within Europe, feedback was gathered on the issues raised in these papers during the Patent Law Committee Meeting held on 15 September 2015.
The Chair had requested that the USPTO, JPO and EPO launch a more focused enquiry into the issues of (1) mandatory declarations within the context of a grace period; and (2) the treatment of conflicting applications, to pave the way for future work of the Sub-Group in this regard, and these two papers were distributed to the Group B+ delegations in time for the Group B+ plenary meeting.
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XII. UNITARY PATENT / UNIFIED PATENT COURT
A. UNITARY PATENT
After the successful adoption in principle of the draft rules relating to unitary patent protection at the end of last year, the Select Committee focused its discussions from the beginning of the year on the financial aspects of the unitary patent. The dismissal of the actions against the two Regulations relating to unitary patent protection by the Court of Justice of the European Union provided important impetus to the discussions on the unitary patent. In June the Select Committee approved a business-friendly fee pattern, based on the True Top 4 proposal submitted by the Office, which will make the unitary patent an attractive option for applicants. It is part of an over-all package comprising all of the financial elements of the Unitary patent including the distribution key for of the Member States to share the renewal fees among them.
The decision of Italy to join the enhanced co-operation additionally raises the attractiveness of the unitary patent which will now cover a territory of 26 EU member states.
Significant progress was also made concerning the distribution key for the repartition of renewal fees between the participating Member States. Finally, the EPO presented to the Select Committee the draft Rules relating to Fees. It is expected that the discussions on the financial issues concerning the unitary patent can be concluded before the end of the year.
B. UNIFIED PATENT COURT (UPC)
In parallel, there has been good progress as regards the number of ratifications of the Agreement on the UPC: Luxembourg deposited its ratification instrument on 22 May 2015 and Portugal on 28 August 2015, making it 8 states which have ratified the agreement up to date. Several other states have indicated that they intend to ratify the UPC Agreement by the end of the year.
The Preparatory Committee in charge of dealing with the multiple legal, financial and practical challenges which must be addressed before the new Court can start its operations. The EPO’s Academy is closely involved in the running of the first training programmes for judges which have started at the beginning of the year at the new Training Centre set up in Budapest.
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XIII. THE EPO AND SOCIETY
A. ANNUAL REPORT 2014
The most significant announcement to the media in the first quarter of 2015 was the continuing growth in filings at the EPO, up 3.1 per cent to over 274,000. European applicants consolidated their share of 35 per cent of the total filings at the EPO last year, with the US and Japan posting similar figures (26 per cent and 18 per cent respectively) to last year too. The biggest growth came from Chinese and US applicants, up by 18.2 per cent and 6.8 per cent respectively. These numbers were put into a broader context with national rankings for patent applications to the EPO per million inhabitants where five European countries are in the top ten.
The press conference in Brussels attracted 30 journalists and generated the highest press coverage ever for the EPO’s annual figures, not only in Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden and Spain, but also in Asia and the US. In some countries, notably in France, the report on the positive development in European patent statistics became front page news and also figured in public statements by national governments. The publication of the EPO’s results to the press was supported by a comprehensive section on our website with statistics, graphics, videos and a highlight report, resulting in a 60 per cent increase in traffic compared with the previous year.
B. EUROPEAN INVENTOR AWARD
The tenth edition of the European Inventor Award took place in Paris on 11 June 2015. The Award offers the best chance to promote the European patent system as a whole and demonstrate its central role in technological progress, innovation, prosperity and job creation. The tenth anniversary of this event was also an opportunity to look back on previous Award winners.
A record number of 451 proposals for nomination were received this year. Following a meeting of the independent international jury, the fifteen finalists for the European Inventor Award were revealed to the media on 21 April. Compared to the previous year, overall reporting of the event increased by 25 per cent. A breakdown of this figure shows an increase of 25 per cent for online media, 62 per cent for TV and 490 per cent for radio.
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By the end of July the media coverage totalled almost 10 000 reports about the Award. This coverage included almost 8000 TV reports, amounting to over 500 hours of TV broadcasting; the videos were placed online over 1300 times, with a similar number of online text reports. In social media the performance has again dramatically increased. For example, through the Award online public poll – the Popular Prize – we attracted twice as many votes as last year, totalling over 40 000.
The Award Ceremony itself was attended by more than 60 European and international journalists, in addition to many more based locally. The inventors gave more than 100 interviews to journalists at the event in Paris alone. In the run- up to and during the event, the President gave some 20 interviews to top-tier publications, in which he underlined the role of innovation for the European economy and explained how the unitary patent was going to strengthen that role.
The traffic on social media also increased, with conversations going up by 60 per cent over last year, and 43 per cent more users clicking on Award-related content on our social media channels.
In showing the vital importance of innovation to the recovering European economy, and the role which good patent strategies play in business success, the tenth edition of the Award has had the greatest impact to date. The eleventh edition of the Award will take place in Lisbon on 9 June 2016.
C. CLIMATE CHANGE, GREEN TECHNOLOGIES AND STANDARDS
The EPO launched a new section of its Y02 classification scheme for climate change mitigation technologies (CCMTs) on 8 June 2015 at the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany. Already containing five main sections on energy, carbon capture, buildings, transport and smart grids, the new section, Y02W for CCMTs in solid and liquid waste treatment, includes approximately 100 further classification codes, and tags a further 300 000 climate change related patent documents, bringing the total to over 2.3 million documents in over 1000 classification codes.
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The EPO is currently developing its fourth joint study with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on "Patenting and economic trends in climate change mitigation technologies in Europe” to be launched at the COP21 in Paris, December 2015. The EPO has continued to actively promote the positive contribution of the patent system to the development and transfer of climate technologies in various international fora, including the UNFCCC. The EPO’s role is one of providing technical knowledge to support a well-informed policy debate. This study will show the role of Europe as a key innovation centre for CCMTs, as well as a key exporter of these technologies through trade and direct foreign investment (FDI).
The EPO has also cooperated closely with the International Renewable Energy Association (IRENA), which promotes cooperation and best practice in renewable energy. IRENA, in association with the EPO and IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission, launched in July 2015 a new online platform giving consolidated access to the world's largest collection of global renewable energy patent documents and standards. Also known as INSPIRE (http://www.inspire.irena.org), the International Standards and Patents in Renewable Energy platform is the first and most complete solution of its kind, helping users locate, search and analyse more than two million patent documents and 400 international standards relating to renewable energy and carbon mitigation technologies.
XIV. CONCLUDING REMARKS
2015 was marked by the steady implementation of the new career and performance management system adopted in December 2014. All steps have been met according to plan. The first effects show an impressive increase in EPO production and productivity, never experienced by the Office before. Numerous projects originating from the different updated roadmaps (IT, Quality, HR, Buildings, Cooperation) have been implemented, helping to reach further progress in terms of quality and efficiency. Difficulties in the social dialogue led to launch a new initiative in order to recognize the unions in the EPO legal framework.
XV. RECOMMENDATION FOR PUBLICATION
Yes.
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