As the year draws to a close, I would like to take this opportunity to review our main achievements. The EPO did well in 2011, despite Europe’s economic difficulties. We [...]
Last week, I had the pleasure to attend the 12th meeting of the EPO Academy’s Supervisory Board, made up of representatives of the EPO member states, partners such as the [...]
Last Tuesday, the EPO held a ceremony to bid farewell to Peter Messerli, its vice-president in charge of the boards of appeal (“VP3″), who is retiring at the end of [...]
Last week, in Munich and Berlin, I had the opportunity to meet three major different user associations: the executive committee of FICPI (the international federation of IP attorneys), the GRUR [...]
The core tasks of the EPO – like any other patent office – are to examine the legal validity of patent applications and to disseminate patent information. The potential economic [...]
I took up my duties as President of the EPO on 1 July 2010 and the time seems to have flown since then. Not surprisingly, I suppose: it was quite [...]
I have always regarded the EPO as a European success story. Starting with just 7 member states, the Organisation now has 38, with a total of 600 million inhabitants. The [...]
On Monday 30 May 2011, the European Competitiveness Council discussed the Unitary Patent Protection project and the outcome represents one more positive step with the final adoption of the two [...]
This week, I had the opportunity to present the EPO’s 2010 statistics to the European and international press. Analysing the figures, two key messages emerge. Firstly, with incoming filings 11 [...]
Last week, I attended my third Administrative Council meeting as EPO President. But it was also my 35th AC, including those I took part in first as head of the [...]
