By Bradley Crawford --
On May 19, 2009, Mr. Enrique Molina Galan, one of nine Directors of Biotechnology at the European Patent Office, discussed biotech patent practice before the European Patent Office at BIO 2009. In a presentation entitled "How Is the European Patent Office Supporting Innovation in Europe?" Mr. Molina Galan provided some preliminary background information and then discussed how the European Patent Office has been trying to foster efficiency and improve patent quality.
Since Mr. Molina Galan's presentation provided quite a bit of information, his discussion will be the subject of a series of posts. Today's post focuses on the background information Mr. Molina Galan provided. Subsequent posts will focus on some of the initiatives the European Patent Office plans on implementing to improve efficiency and increase patent quality, as well as possible interpretations and applications of new EPO rules garnered from a conversation Patent Docs had with with Mr. Molina Galan on May 20, 2009.
Mr. Molina Galan began his talk with some background information on the European Patent Organization. For example, he noted that the European Patent Organization is a European intergovernmental institution, but not an EU institution, that is self-financing, and comprised of 35 member states that constitute a market of more than 500 M citizens. After giving a brief history of how the European Patent Organization came to be, he noted that the European Patent Organization is comprised of two parts. The first is the European Patent Office, which is the executive body and is responsible for examining European patent applications. The second is the Administrative Council, which is the legislative body. The Administrative Council is made up of delegates from the member states, it supervises the activities of the European Patent Office, and has a legislative function. The European Patent Office has five locations and a total staff of about 6,685 people. Around 60% (3,990) of the EPO staff are patent examiners.
Mr. Molina Galan also reported the number of PCT applications entering the European regional phase increased from 74,296 in 2006 to 78,684 in 2007, and then to 83,548 in 2008. He also reported the number of direct European Filings as 61,133 in 2006, 62,755 in 2007, and 63,013 in 2008. Upon analyzing the residence of the applicants for the year 2007, the top three filers were the U.S. at 25.3% of all applications, followed by Germany at 17.9%, and Japan at 16.3%.
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