Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > European Patent Office - incentive to innovate

Next month, the European Patent Office and the European Commission will hand out the European Inventor Awards 2010 to individuals and teams of inventors whose pioneering work has contributed to progress and prosperity in Europe, and to shaping the world we live in.

This year’s nominees cover a wide range of technical fields, from the conservation of drinking water to the synthesis of football-shaped carbon molecules or “fullerenes”; and from cancer treatments to digital data encryption. Other nominations relate to technical innovations that have contributed to the success of the Wii console and the civilian use of GPS; to ground-breaking research on the mobile use of fuel cells; to “green” plastic; and to internet access straight from a wall socket.

The calibre of these nominations shows that Europe is a continent of innovation. At the heart of this success lies a solid system of patent protection. Patents give inventors the exclusive right to prevent others from exploiting their invention for a limited time in exchange for disclosing the details of the invention. This acts as a strong incentive to innovate. Indeed, many important inventions might not have seen the light of day without the patent system.

Roots in europe

The patent system has come a long way since the first patent law was passed by the city of Venice in 1474 to protect the interests of inventors by assuring them the right to their inventions and prohibiting unauthorised copying. In 1624, the Statute of Monopolies was enacted in England, which allowed patents to be granted for a limited period to the “true and first inventor”. Other important conventions and treaties followed in the 19th century as more national patent laws were enacted. The setting up of the International Patent Institute (IIB) in The Hague in 1947 as a common resource for patent searching and archiving ushered in a European approach to patents.

Recognising the need for closer co-operation on patent protection, 16 countries signed the European Patent Convention (EPC) in 1973, setting up an international organisation, the European Patent Organisation, with its executive body, the European Patent Office (EPO). Today, the Organisation has 36 member states and four associated states. With nearly 7,000 staff, the European Patent Office is the second largest European organisation after the European Commission. The European Patent Office has its headquarters in Munich. with offices in The Hague, Berlin, Vienna and Brussels.

European patents and the grant procedure

The European Patent Office examines patent applications in all fields of technology, applying a centralised and uniform grant procedure. Today, it is possible to obtain patent protection in up to 40 European countries (reaching a market of about 570 million people) on the basis of a single application in one of the European Patent Office three official languages (English, French and German). This makes it the largest transnational patent system in the world.

Since no unitary EU-wide patent yet exists, patent applicants need to select the countries in which they would like protection. The patent granted by the European Patent Office has the same legal effects as a national patent does in each of these countries. In general, it is more economic to file a European patent application rather than national ones when protection is sought for at least four European countries.

Under the EPC, patents are only granted for inventions that are new (not known to the public in any form), involve an inventive step (not obvious to a skilled person) and are industrially applicable (can be manufactured or used industrially). The European Patent Office examination procedure serves to establish that these criteria are fulfilled and that a patent may be granted. While the patent system is generally open to all technologies, there are a number of exceptions to patentability under the EPC, such as scientific discoveries, mathematical formulae, aesthetic creations and methods of doing business, to name a few. Other restrictions are found in the area of biotechnology.

The benefits of patents

A growing number of individual inventors and businesses – both SMEs and large companies – are realising the commercial impact of patenting their inventions. Patents give companies the possibility to reap the rewards of their investment and recoup development costs. They have also become an important tool for measuring a company’s R&D performance, as well as a trading and bargaining chip for cross-licensing and technology alliances. And many companies now consider it important to have a large patent portfolio to be recognised as a serious business partner and raise capital.

Patents are not just used in the world of business – they are increasingly of interest to academia. More and more public research institutions and universities are now patenting their inventions. Research institutions can start a company to commercialise their patent, or have it licensed by others, which in turn funds university research and opens up new possibilities for innovation.

Patents also have an important knowledge transfer function. In return for patent protection, the inventor has to disclose the details of the invention, which are published in the patent document. A large proportion of the world’s applied technical knowledge can therefore be found in patent documents. The availability of this information inspires further inventions and at the same time helps prevent the duplication of R&D work.

The world’s largest database of patent information, esp@cenet, launched jointly by the European Patent Office and European Commission in 1998, contains over 64 million patent documents from around the globe, and is available via the Internet free of charge.

Meeting new challenges

With the advent of a knowledge-based society and globalised economy, the world’s major patent offices have all faced a steady rise in the number of applications in the past decade and growing workloads. This has resulted in a major backlog of unexamined patent applications worldwide. At the European Patent Office, between 1999 and 2008, the number of patent applications filed grew by an average of 5.7% per year. The European Patent Office, originally created to deal with 30,000 applications a year, received 134,500 applications in 2009, amounting to more than 350 every single day.

The current economic crisis has halted this growth – in 2009 the European Patent Office registered a dip in filing figures of about 8% in comparison to 2008 – but it is too early to assess whether this is a blip or a trend. History teaches us that while economic downturns are usually followed by a drop in the number of patent applications being filed, this is usually only for a short period.

The emergence of new and rapidly developing technologies has put the patent system to the test. The European Patent Office is fully aware of the growing public discussion about the limits of patenting and recognises that for some technologies alternative ways of handling intellectual property, such as open access, open source or creative commons, might also be suited to encouraging innovation.

To secure the value of European patents, the European Patent Office puts strong emphasis on safeguarding the quality of patents it grants, aiming to ensure there is always a clear “inventive step” before issuing a patent. The strict application of procedures results in patents which are enforceable and stand up well to legal challenges. The European Patent Office also continually strives to improve the efficiency of its processes and cut delays since pending applications can hinder innovation by creating legal uncertainties for both the creators of an invention and any potential competitors.

A package of new measures that came into force on 1 April 2010 helps to realign the process with a view to speeding up the granting of patents and improving the quality of incoming applications, and of the patents granted.

Co-operation for innovation

The European Patent Office co-operates closely with its partners in national and European institutions and European industry to ensure that the patent system continues to support innovation in the spirit of the Lisbon Strategy. The European Patent Office has welcomed the progress made by EU member states in December 2009 on establishing an EU patent that would be valid in all EU countries and has provided input to the discussion on the design of a central European patent litigation system to accompany it. This breakthrough political agreement on the creation of an EU patent and single patent court paves the way towards a true supranational patent system in Europe, which has been discussed since the 1960s and anxiously awaited by European industry.

The European Patent Office maintains close ties with the EU institutions and co-operates with them in all patent-related questions. It is the European Patent Office task to support the EU’s innovation and IP policy with our work. In a number of patent-related projects in Asia, especially China, where the European Patent Office is implementing a E16m programme to strengthen intellectual property rights, the European Patent Office even acts as executive agency on behalf of the European Commission.

To secure the future success of the patent system, the European Patent Office has initiated a policy of co-operation with other patent offices in Europe and also at global level. The world’s five largest patent offices, the US, Japan, China, Korea and the European Patent Office, have agreed to collaborate closely to develop a strategy to eliminate unnecessary duplication of efforts.

As many companies operate globally, a large number of applications filed with the various patent offices relate to one and the same invention. Work-sharing is therefore key to tackling the global workload in the patent system in order to keep it reliable and effective into the future.

Making the system work for society

Patents are increasingly in the public spotlight, in the concerns of citizens, and on the agenda of policymakers in Europe and worldwide. What was once an arcane legal instrument is now a much-talked-about right of unprecedented economic importance in our current innovation and information-driven global society.

The European Patent Office is actively participating in the debate about how the patent system should be reshaped to better serve the needs of society and industry, create jobs and economic growth, and promote the development of new technologies that will help us to tackle global problems such as climate change, disease, food and water shortages and environmental pollution.

In the field of climate change mitigation technologies, for example, the European Patent Office is currently conducting a joint project with the United Nations Environment Programme and International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development in Geneva to gain a better understanding of the role played by patents in the deployment and dissemination of these technologies in developing countries. The first results of this study were presented at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, and the final report will be published in mid-2010.

The exact scope and shape of intellectual property protection is debated, but there is a clear consensus that patents and the patent system are needed to ensure the development and diffusion of pioneering technologies into the future.

For more information, visit the European Patent Office :
Website: www.epo.org