EPO and member states discuss co-operation
Representatives of the European Patent Office (EPO) and national patent offices have met in an attempt to improve the quality and efficiency of the patent system in Europe.
The meeting, hosted by the Hellenic Industrial Property Organisation in Crete, was attended by representatives of 38 national patent offices as well as the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM).
Among the topics discussed during the two-day meeting were training for staff at national patent offices, IP awareness and patent-related IT tools and services.
"The challenges facing us all have one feature in common: they can only be addressed through co-operation between all of the actors in the European patent system," said EPO president Benoît Battistelli.
He added: "We have good reason to be pleased with the achievements so far. The co-operation has been put on a more systematic and efficient footing, instead of following a case-by-case approach."
Participants also reviewed progress in the EPO's "Co-operation Roadmap" for 2012-15, which is now half-way through its implementation.
Roadmap projects launched include Patent Translate, the EPO's free machine translation service, which covers the 28 official languages of the member states as well as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.
The meeting took place from June 12-13.
