SwpatepoEn

News & Chronology

• 2004-10-00 EPO announces public hearings on future of patent system

• 2004-08-20 EPO decision: computer-implemented business methods are patentable

• 2004-07-01 Alain Pompidou new president of EPO, to be followed by Alison Brimelow in 2007

• 2004-06-07 EPO coordinating Arab patent movement

• 2004-06-15 EPO sidesteps EPC on gene plant patent, rejects Greenpeace complaint

• 2004-06-03 EPO patent examiners lose faith in patent quality

• 2004-01-14 EPO president answers to critical MEPs

• 2003-10-30 decision about successorship of president Kober reached

• Press Release: A Public Service Organisation out of control? 2002-08-10 SUEPO (EPO Staff Union)

Extract:

The EPO is not bound by many of the laws or regulations that most of the citizens of Europe take for granted, such as the European Convention on Human Rights.

Some examples:

The Employment Law offers the staff extremely limited protection. Staff can be dismissed almost at will by the President and have no claims to unemployment pay or other social security payments:

Basic legal rights are ignored. The President is the ultimate ruler of the EPO. He is judge, jury and executioner. His decisions on matters within the office are final. Any decision made by the President can be enacted immediately. There is no "stay of execution" pending the outcome of appeal hearings. Sanctions are arbitrary and harsh.

Even criminal law is disregarded: In 1995 the then President of the EPO physically attacked and injured a staff member, the Administrative Council of the EPO subsequently refusing to lift the immunity of the President.

• Good summary of EPO practice included in this doc

• Patenting Business Methods under the EPO

• Fritz Teufel, the high priest himself about the many ways on what the EPO may not do to prevent granting software, e.g.:

  • The claim must be examined as a whole ("claim as a whole")
  • The invention as claimed has technical character if it produces a technical effect
  • The technical effect need not be new
  • The technical character is evident if the claimed subject matter relates to the control of physical processes, physical entities or devices
  • The technical character of an invention is not affected by its use in a non-technical field
  • The technical character is evident if the claims relate to an apparatus (device, system, etc)
  • The technical character of a computer-implemented invention is demonstrated if the claimed subject-matter exhibits a 'further technical effect' which goes beyond the normal interaction between a computer program and the computer hardware.

  • The test for the further technical effect is separate from the test novelty or inventive activity.

  • The further technical effect can be demonstrated by the use of technical considerations.
  • The further technical effect can be assumed for a claim which recites technical elements (e.g. computers).

Examples of technical contributions to the "claim as a whole" by elements which "as such" are non-technical could be:

• A mathematical algorithm used to improve the operating characteristics of a known device or method - the combination of device and algorithm operates in a technically different way

• A computer comprising a new arrangement of data or processing steps to increase the operating speed or reduce the required computer resources for automatic processing
• A business method implemented on a computer to provide a new functionality of the computer system