EPO
Adopting a stricter view on ethics?
By Vibeke Warberg Rohde | Posted on June 3, 2014
The everyday work of an IP attorney may seem to amount largely to pencil pushing, but it does in fact involve a surprisingly large number of decisions, where moral issues have to be considered. For instance, can I take on this new client without risking to step on existing clients’ toes? Events of the last...
Introduction of fee reductions for small entities before the EPO
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on May 15, 2014
Effective 1 April 2014 the Administrative Council (AC) of the EPO has changed the rules for obtaining reduction on certain fees charged in relation to the procedure before the EPO . The requirement that the applicant must be a resident of or have principal place of business is in an EPC contracting state with an...
Wider scope of protection for Swedish patents?
By AWA | Posted on November 20, 2013
Last week the Swedish government referred an amendment of the Swedish patent law to the Council on Legislation for reconsideration. According to the suggested amendment, patent applications filed in English need not be translated into Swedish. Instead, they can be granted in English. For applicants filing a Swedish patent application in English and wishing to...
Tags: EPO, Europe, patent application, sweden
Cooperative Patent Classification – Time to prepare for the launch
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on October 18, 2012
Almost a year ago I wrote on the Awapatent IP Blog about the efforts of the EPO and USPTO to harmonize their patent classification systems to form the Cooperative Patent Classification (in short CPC). The work is progressing, and it has now become time for an update. The CPC is now taking shape, and it has...
Tags: CPC, EPO, IPC, patent classification, USPTO
The Patent Prosecution Highway expands
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on May 31, 2012
I have previously written about the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement, which aims at easing the requirements for requesting patent examinations. The latest news is that the EPO (European Patent Office) entered the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement at the beginning of the year (29 January) and thus the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement has now been signed by a total of nine countries. With...
EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal repeats obligation to raise objections in time
By AWA | Posted on February 1, 2012
Last week, the European Patent Office released two new decisions by the Enlarged Board of Appeal on petitions for review, R 2/11 and R 10/11. Both the underlying petitions were based on what the petitioners regarded as fundamental procedural defects before respective Boards of Appeal 3.2.04 and 3.2.03. Both cases are appeals from opposition proceedings. In R...
Patentability of inventions relating to human embryonic stem cells
By AWA | Posted on October 20, 2011
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has recently issued a decision clarifying the situation on patentability, in Europe, of inventions relating to human embryonic stem cells. In the decision it is declared that the concept of a “human embryo”, the exploitation of which is excluded from patentability according to the EU Biotechnology Directive...
Tags: awapatent, CJ, EPO, Patent, Stem cells
The EPO starts cooperation with Google to provide machine translation of patents
By AWA | Posted on March 29, 2011
On 24 March, the EPO and Google signed an agreement to collaborate on machine translation of patents. Using Google Translate technology, the EPO will offer translations into 28 European languages, and into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian. In order to be able to adapt the machine translation to the specific language used in patents, Google...
Tags: EPO, Google, Translation
A brighter future for the EU patent
By Anders Heebøll-Nielsen | Posted on December 13, 2010
A brighter future for the EU patent 11 EU member states have decided to move towards an EU patent under an enhanced cooperation aiming to reduce costs of patenting in the EU. Progress towards implementation of the long desired EU patent has until now been hindered by disagreements between the EU member states regarding translation...
BRCA patents in Europe
By Niklas Mattsson | Posted on April 1, 2010
An ongoing lawsuit in the US has attracted a lot of attention worldwide. The American Civil Liberties Union has, together with other parties, sued the US Patent and Trademark Office, Myriad Genetics and others. On Monday 29 March 2010, a judge in a federal District Court in New York ruled that the “Myriad patents” in...
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