The European Patent Office (EPO) annouced on Friday that special search services beyond the scope of a standard patentability search would from Saturday 1 September instead be provided by the national offices of the EPO's member states.
The decision to end the EPO's Special Search Programme (SSP) was taken by the Organisation's Administrative Council in June 2007, and came as part of an effort to re-define the roles of Europe's patent offices within the framework of the European Patent Network (EPN).
So far 14 member states - Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovakia, Turkey and the United Kingdom - have confirmed that they are equipped to provide similar search services. The list is expected to grow as other offices announce their comparable services.
The EPN resulted from the two-year strategy debate on co-operation between the EPO and the IP offices of the member states which ended in June 2006.
It has four main pillars: the Utilisation Pilot Project, a new Co-operation
Policy, the Customer Service Project (which the Special Search Programme falls
under) and the Quality Project.
Tags: Italy | Italy
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