[DE Deutsch] [FR Francais] [JA Nihongo] [translatable text] [howto help] [printable version] [Addenda]

Google
News of 2003Nokia & CoAmazon 03-08-18Porto 03-07-15EP 03-06-26noEPatents 03-06-22

EPO President to speak before European Parliament

On 27 November 2003 the European Parliament's Committees for Industry and Legal Affairs will hold a joint meeting to hear a presentation by Ingo KOBER, President of the European Patent Office, on the mission and functions of EPO.

Questions submitted by Piia-Noora Kauppi MEP

  1. We welcome the EPO's new mission statement of "strengthening innovation and economic growth in the interest of European citizens". In the European Parliament we have decided by large majority that certain classes of patents which are currently granted by the EPO do not serve innovation and economic growth. Is this reason enough for the EPO to consider stopping to grant such patents?
  2. Vice president Desantes said in Paris at OECD that indeed this might be a reason for the EPO to reconsider the whole policy on software. Desantes and his colleagues showed a remarkable spirit of political leadership, very much contrasting with that of the USPTO's officials at that conference. And it's not the only time that this has been remarked. You have said something similar to a Belgian newspaper last November. Art 52 seems to give you a legitimate basis for refusing to grant software and business method patents. In case you do consider this option, what obstacle is there to overcome? Who will be the resisting forces, who might be the supporting ones?
  3. The current EPO practice on software appears to be based on a series of decisions taken by very few people at the Technical Boards of Appeal, from Vicom (1986) to IBM I & II (1998) and Pension Benefit Systems (2000). Did the TBA arrive at these decisions independently or do they rflect an underlying decision by the EPO (President or the Administrative Council)?
  4. Some say that not the TBA but only the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) could possibly have been legitimated to take decisions on fundamental legal matters. To what degree are these decisions binding for the EPO today?
  5. Can the EPO not decide to adopt a different administrative practise, based on the political will that has been expressed by this Parliament?
  6. What about taking the matter to the Enlarged Board of Appeal and asking them to overrule the TBA?
  7. CEC has suggested establishing a quality control division in EPO. Do you believe that such a quality control division would be a useful addition to the EPO structure?
  8. Do you believe there are systematic problems of quality in any areas of the EPO's work?
  9. Are there any areas of patentability which should be particularly investigated to determine whether the current
  10. Could you give an order-of-magnitude estimate of the number of
  11. Would you be the right person to choose the members of such a division, or would it be better for them to be independently nominated by the legislatures of the EPC member states (including the EU)?
  12. What is the real reason mathematical formula aren't patentable and why doesn't that apply to computer programs?
  13. It has been argued that proposed Art. 3a (which says data processing is not a field of technology) would preclude patenting computers or data processing devices. Yet, music is not a field of technology but musical instruments (and CD-players &c) can be patented. What is the difference?
  14. How exactly do you determine whether something 'advances the state of the Art' or 'makes a technical contribution'? Or, when do you ever decide it doesn't?
  15. What is EPO's position on the effect of competition in encouraging innovation, and in particular when (if ever) patents might actually hinder innovation by stifling competition?
  16. Does EPO see any problems in the potential conflict between patents and citizens' rights of fair use?
  17. Assuming the office had plenty of resources to do examination in a perfect way, how much income in fees would it loose with each rejected patent as compared to what would it get if granted? Is additional expenditure on examination sustainable in case some applicant drowns the office in invalid patent applications and appeals? What mechanism is there to respond to such a kind of denial of service attack by applicants, besides degrading examination standards and hoping for judges to invalidate granted patents?
  18. How do you reconcile your behaviour in granting such patents as, e.g., the Amazon gift-order patent with the examination guidelines of 1978 and with article 52 of the European Patent Convention? (http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/ep927945/index.en.html)
  19. Would it really be acceptable to grant a patent to the use of non-English languages in Internet addresses?
  20. How would the directive in various forms affect the sample "inventions" in http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/testsuite/?
  21. What is currently the average time for an ICT-patent to be granted in the EPO? And how long does it take to receive the preliminary research report of the second phase of the PCT process? Do you think these timelines are reasonable and what are you planning to do to change this?
  22. Is it true, what companies say, that at the moment it is possible to patent business models if you are able to "top" your application technically enough?

Other Issues

The Competitiveness Council meets on November 27th -- the same day that Kober is in Brussels, to speak about the amended software patent directive proposal.

Note that Kober will be replaced by Alain Pompidou on 1st July 2004. Alain Pompidou - though originally a skeptic on gene sequence patentability - became famous for his manoeuvering of the Parliament to vote the infamous article 5 of directive 98/44. Be prepared for advanced casuistics at the time. However, he might want to show that he is giving a new direction.

Annotated Links

->Questions to the President of the European Patent Office
Suggestions to members of the European Parliament
->Ingo Kober and Software Patents
president of the European Patent Office (EPO) since the mid-nineties, former FDP (liberal party) secretary of state in the BMJ (ministery of justice), active promoter of patentability expansion and of international unification of the patent system.
[ FFII Software Patent News 2003 | CEOs of big telcos sign letter against Europarl Amendments | Amazon Ordering Method Patented in Europe | Software Patent Hearing 2003/07/15 in Porto | European Parliament Rejects Attempt to Rush Vote on Software Patent Directive | Vote in 8 days: 2000 IT bosses ask European Parliament to say NO to software patents ]
Valid HTML 4.01!
http://swpat.ffii.org/news/03/kober1106/index.en.html
© 2004/02/05 (2003/11/06) Workgroup
english version 2003/11/27 by PILCH Hartmut