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EPO Guidelines 2Day Roadshow – Review Part Part 3 – Added Matter
Our final post covering the EPO’s recent roadshow for professional representatives around Europe is on the subject of added matter. The first article in this series looked at the rule 164 procedure and the second article covered early processing, PCT Direct and rule 71(3).
European patent applications, of course, should disclose the invention in a sufficiently clear and complete manner that the invention can be carried out by a skilled person. Applications should not be amended such that they contain subject matter that extends beyond the content of the application as filed. Extended added matter is both a ground for opposition under Art 100(c) and revocation under Art 138(1) EPC.
The EPO representative at the roadshow confirmed the general approach the Examiners take when assessing whether an amendment represents added matter. The practice at first instance is: (more…)
Intellectual Property from a Corporate in-house perspective
It’s easy for a private practice patent attorney to develop a narrow view of the IP world. Essentially:
Draft – File – Prosecute – Grant – Repeat*
It was therefore a pleasure to welcome Donal O’Connell1 to Keltie recently to provide some insight into the world of Intellectual Property from the perspective of the corporate in-house officer. (more…)
UPC Update: Rules of Procedure, IT user testing & UK threats provisions
UPC Update – Rules of Procedure
At the last meeting of the Preparatory Committee, the 18th draft of the Rules of Procedure of the Unified Patent Court was adopted.
This 18th draft will, subject to some modifications when the court fees have been decided, form the final version of the Rules of Procedure.
The 18th draft does not comprise too many substantive changes from the previous version (a handy comparison of the two versions can be seen here) but IPcopy notes the following changes: (more…)
The Patent Box Reloaded – Welcome to the Nexus
HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs have jointly launched a consultation on proposed changes to the UK Patent Box scheme. The changes are being proposed in order to meet proposals developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to harmonise preferential tax regimes that operate in G20 states.
The consultation runs until 4 December 2015 and sets out the Government’s preferred approach to the new international framework set out by the OECD. The consultation will affect UK business that hold/exploit patents.
Due to some slightly compressed deadlines arising from the OECD, the Government’s plan is to publish proposed legislation in December 2015 and then a response to the consultation in spring next year. The current patent box rules will apparently be modified by legislation in the 2016 Finance Bill.
The consultation document includes some background on the existing Patent Box scheme. The Patent Box, which of course is a tax initiative that seeks to make the UK competitive for high-tech companies, has apparently seen 639 companies taking part so far and receiving benefits that total £335 million. (more…)
UPC: More on the sunrise opt-out register & Taskforce Update
In our post last week we highlighted a story we’d seen that the UKIPO would be responsible for the opt-out register during the sunrise period for the Unified Patent Court and that this register would be transferred to the Court’s registry when the court became active.
We’d not heard of this development before so we reached out to the UPC taskforce team at the UKIPO and asked them about the sunrise period, the opt-out register and the UKIPO’s involvement. (more…)
UPC: Protocol, Opt-out, Start Date and Survey
IPcopy has been busy with reviewing the EPO Guidelines recently and so we are now belatedly reporting a few unitary patent items of interest: the signing of the Protocol, a firm-ish start date and a survey. (more…)
EPO Guidelines 2Day Roadshow – Review Part 2 – Early processing, PCT Direct & Rule 71(3)
The EPO is currently running a roadshow for professional representatives around Europe covering changes to the Guidelines for Examination and other matters such as rule 164 EPC, “Doing business with the EPO electronically”, early entry into the European phase, effective use of procedural options, the rule 71(3) EPC procedure and Article 123(2) EPC.
Recently the roadshow made it to London and in this post we take a look at early processing, PCT Direct and rule 71(3) EPC. The first post in this series looked at the rule 164 procedure and some fee related changes. (more…)
EPO Guidelines 2Day Roadshow – Review Part 1 – Rule 164 and General Changes
The EPO is currently running a roadshow for professional representatives around Europe covering changes to the Guidelines for Examination and other matters such as rule 164 EPC, “Doing business with the EPO electronically”, early entry into the European phase, effective use of procedural options, the rule 71(3) EPC procedure and Article 123(2) EPC.
Recently the roadshow made it to London and in this post we take a look at the changes to the rule 164 procedure and also some of the fee related changes. (more…)
Italy has now joined the unitary patent
As previously reported Italy had formally requested to join the unitary patent. We’ve now heard (thanks to ipcopyreader Giuseppe Colucci) that Italy’s request to join the system has now been processed and Italy has become the 26th member of the enhanced cooperation group on unitary patent protection (Spain and Croatia are the two EU countries missing from the club). (more…)
Whose patent is it anyway? (ORoPO)
The statement: “We just want to look into the ownership of company X’s patents and then maybe assign them over after the deal” seems fairly innocuous. But, anyone who has ever worked through a due diligence exercise or even just been asked to assign a few IP assets from A to B knows that IP ownership can get difficult quickly.
One particular issue is whether it’s possible to trust the public record. Is the IP asset owned by company A or did they assign it away at some point in the past to company C who just hasn’t gotten round to updating the register?
This potential lack of accuracy in patent records is now being addressed by the ORoPO project which is a free and open register of patent ownership. (more…)
IPcopy 