Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform Claude Quintelier April 6, 2011

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform EPO fee policy Do the filing, search and examination fee really cover the costs? In general they do not cover the real costs, but the renewal fee payments finances for a substantial part the work done at the EPO

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform What about the opposition, the appeal fee and the petition for review fee? Opposition fee 705€ Appeal fee 1 180€ Petition for review fee 2 625€

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform The opposition and appeal fee also clearly do not cover the real work, whereas it looks like that in all but one of the cases, the fee for the petition of review has probably been of financial benefit to the EPO

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform Taking into considerations that an opposition and/or an appeal are generally filed at a moment where the economical value of the patent (application) can be much better evaluated than at the filing stage, it seems justified to increase the opposition and appeal fee so as to better reflect the real costs.

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform For what concerns the petition for review fee, there is clearly a problem taking into account that a majority of the cases are judged as being“inadmissible” The EPO should therefore consider on the on hand to raise the petition for review fee, for example, to 5 000€, but reimburse 4 000€ if the petition is judged as being inadmissible

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform Machine translations On March 24, 2011 the EPO signed an agreement with Google to collaborate on machine translations of patents into multiple European, Slavonic and Asian languages This partnership will enable free, real-time translation

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform Why free? The EPO could have considered users to pay a subscription fee for using the tool. For free signifies that the applicants will pay, who else?

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform The tool is nevertheless welcome as it will make accessible a substantial amount of patent literature and will thus contribute to increase the quality of granted patents or applications to be filed

12/06/ Addressing the cost and quality issues in patent reform However no legal value should be accorded to such a machine translation. Filing a machine translation as the translation of a document used as prior art in an opposition should be inadmissible

Claude Quintelier Thank you very much for your attention