New EPO President Takes the Reins

This article was included in our Winter 2010 edition of Inside IP magazine.

Following an election in March 2010, Benoît Battistelli, a French national, was elected to be the next President of European Patent Office (EPO) for a term of five years. He succeeded Alison Brimelow, who had headed the EPO since 2007.

In his first statement after taking office in July 2010, Mr Battistelli  stated that one of his main priorities was “to develop a climate of trust between the management and staff of the Office”. In view of the often less than satisfactory relations between the examiners and senior management over the years regarding unfair work conditions, we hope that Mr Battistelli can do what is necessary to get the most out of the highly skilled employees of the EPO. On the policy front, Battistelli cites the need to improve co-operation with EPO member states in the framework of the European network of patent offices, and strengthen international co-operation with patent offices worldwide, such as with WIPO and the Chinese Patent Office, in order to reduce work duplication. He also advocates the introduction of an EU patent and development of a European patent litigation system. He reiterated this view at the 15th European Patent Judges Symposium held in September in Lisbon and,  at a seminar in November held at the University College of London, which was attended by a number of our attorneys.

We expect the EPO to maintain its stringent bio-patenting policies under Mr Battistelli.  Indeed, he has commented, in the wake of talks held with the visit of German food minister, Ilse Aigner,  who recently visited the EPO, that: “the EPO is very aware of its responsibilities to society in this field, and it applies the most exacting standards to its examination of applications for biotechnology patents”. 

In addition, green technologies are also likely to be given increased emphasis at the EPO in the coming years , in view of what Battistelli said at a related conference on climate change that “the patent system has a key role to play in the debate on climate change by providing objective data and evidence”.  Partly with this in mind, the EPO has already developed a new classification scheme for clean energy technologies, which have been applied (retrospectively) to its database of patents and patent applications. We wish Mr Battistelli the best of luck in balancing his ambitions on the global stage and the need to ensure good running of the EPO against the needs of users of the European patent system.

29 Nov 2010

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