CIPA: EPO REVIEW
Battistelli, this is explained by a higher rate of withdrawal by applicants at a late stage of processing and the stronger focus of resources on the search phase, in particular with the start of the new ‘Early Certainty from Search’ scheme in July 2014. But an alternative explanation is that the large backlog of pending applications has increased.
Time to grant According to the EPO’s annual report, in 2014 the median time to grant a European patent application from formal check of
are granted four or five years aſter filing, 29% take between five and ten years to grant, and about 4% take 11 years or more (based on calculations using the EPO register). Te average grant times for biotech are worse, with 40% of applications taking five or more years to grant.
Te 2014 annual report doesn’t give a figure
for the number of pending applications. Te last time these were released as part of
its the
examination request to publishing a mention of the grant of the patent was 26.2 months, which suggests a median period from filing at the EPO of at least 32 months. Comparative figures for earlier years are not readily available. In 2009, the last time that the EPO published figures on the matter, the average period to grant a patent was 43.1 months aſter the application was received. Te field of biotechnology was noted as being particularly slow, with an average grant time of 57 months. Although the median time for patent grant
may now be under three years, for a significant proportion of applications the process is still very drawn out. About 27% of all applications
annual report was 2009, when the figure was a little over 500,000. Te EPO does, however, disclose these figures in the IP5 statistics report. At the end of 2013 (the last date for which data
are available), about 2.5 million applications were pending at the EPO, the JPO, the KIPO, and the USPTO, a decrease of 5.5% compared to the number of applications pending at the end of 2012 (2.6 million). Tis is mainly accounted for by drops of
14% at the JPO and 5% at the USPTO. More than 520,000 applications were pending at the EPO, up 3% on the previous year. Tere is little reason to expect this figure will be better for 2014, for surely an improvement would have been mentioned. According to Battistelli, 2015 will bear witness to significant progress in helping the patent
Gordon Wright is a chartered patent attorney, a European patent attorney and a member of CIPA’s press and PR committee. He recently retired from his position as partner at Elkington and Fife. He can be contacted at:
gordon.mcrae.wright@
gmail.com
system to better respond to business needs and improve quality globally. Reducing the backlog in pending applications is a key business need that both the US and Japanese patent offices appear to be addressing. Will 2015 be the year for real progress at the EPO?
www.worldipreview.com
World Intellectual Property Review Annual 2015
37
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