IP Summit: Battistelli says “we can do a lot to improve the patent system”
Paris's Chamber of Commerce and Industry was the venue for this year's PanEuropean IP Summit, where European Patent Office (EPO) president Benoît Battistelli gave the keynote speech.
He discussed the “major developments” the office has seen this year and the challenges it faces as the volume of patent filings continues to rise.
2012 was a record year for filings at the patent office, he said, while 2013 is projected to finish with a 4 percent increase on last year. US applicants remain the biggest filers, followed by those from Japan and Germany.
Just two years ago Chinese applicants were about as prolific as those from France – today China is responsible for 14 percent more patent applications than France and is expected to file a million patents at the EPO in 2015.
However, to ensure that the EPO keeps up with this surge in filings, often related to complex inventions with prior art developments in different languages, work needs to be done. “We can do a lot to improve the patent system,” he said.
“[The] quantity [of patents issued] must be balanced by quality.”
Describing the EPO as a “gateway to the European market”, Battistelli said it is crucial to understand the technical product by bringing down the language barrier. To that end, the Patent Translate product, which will provide patent information in the 28 languages spoken in the EU, as well as Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian, is getting closer to “becoming a reality” on that scale, he said.
Wider adoption of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) will also be a factor – last week Brazil officially joined the CPC, joining China, South Korea and Russia.
The second phase of the study, which found a third of all jobs in the EU is generated by IPR-intensive industries, is due to start early in 2014, which will provide another window on the importance of IP to the European economy.
“The patent system is not an end [in] itself,” he said, adding that it must be shaped according to what is happening in the world around it.
The PanEuropean IP Summit runs from December 9 to 11, 2013.
