Date

Start: 07.05.2012
End: 08.05.2012

Location

Munich, Germany

Organised by

• European Patent Office

Working language(s)

English

Description

At its first meeting, on 23 January 2012, the Economic and Scientific Advisory Board agreed to explore three topics for further research by holding a series of workshops with stakeholders and users of the patent system and other expert organisations.

Topics for these first two workshops organised back to back are:

• 1) Pricing/fees
• 2) Patent Quality.

The goal of these workshops is to get a comprehensive picture of the issues at stake and identify questions for further research.

Level of expertise

Advanced

Medium

Classroom training

Content

Workshop on Patent Quality on 7 May 2012:

The objective of this workshop is to identify the determinants of quality in the patent system by bringing together the different stakeholders' perspectives. In particular the following topics will be discussed in detail:

• Various definitions of quality of a patent/an invention/patent examination based on different stakeholders' perspectives;
• What are the essential factors of a comprehensive understanding of patent quality?
• What kind of action can be taken, and what factors are needed to improve patent quality (subject-matter, length of protection, patent breadth, inventive step, timeliness)?
• What is the role of the major factors identified for patent quality with regard to the formulation of questions for future research?
• The patent system is - besides having other functions - one of the most important sources of technical information. Are the patent descriptions useful for this purpose, and can their quality be improved to better meet the requirement of providing clear and useful, easily accessible technical information?

Workshop on Pricing/Fees on 8 May 2012:

The objective of this workshop is to review the impact and societal effects of the fees charged in a patent system, comprising application fees, procedural fees and renewal fees. Following a comparison of existing fee policies of patent offices, the following questions will be addressed:

• Winners and losers of the current EP fee system
• Impact of pricing on competitiveness of European companies
• The influence of pricing on applicants' behaviour
• How can access to the EP system be guaranteed for SMEs and universities?
• The relationship between procedural fees and filing behaviour as between renewal fees and patent lifetime
• The social benefit of the current system and alternatives to it.

Venue details

European Patent Office, Munich

Contact

European Patent Office
Erhardtstr. 27
80469 Munich
GERMANY
Tel. +49-89-2399-1803
kterzic@epo.org

Max. number of participants

40

Reference

ESAB01

Registration deadline

Deadline for registration is over.

• Online registration form