EPO Patents Receive Popular Endorsement

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

15 June 2010

The European Patent Office offers the best patent quality among the IP5 offices, according to a recent survey.

The survey of corporate and private practice IP professionals, conducted by Thomson Reuters and the Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine, covers litigation, commercialisation, internal corporate relationship and patent quality.

According to the survey, 71% of corporate counsels thought that the quality of EPO-granted patents is "excellent or very good", with 56% of the private practice attorneys sharing this view. The Japan Patent Office came in second with the respective votes of 55% and 40%, followed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (52% and 38% respectively), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (29%/21%) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (22%/20%).

"To be seen by the users of the system as delivering the highest-quality patents is the best endorsement any office can hope to get", EPO President, Alison Brimelow told IAM when presented with the results.

The survey also shows that the level of quality of patents granted by the EPO improved over the previous years: 28% of the corporate attorneys and 29% of their counterparts in private practice agreed to this view, while roughly two thirds of the respondents confirmed that it had stayed the same, and 6% and 7% respectively answered that the quality had deteriorated.

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