In a comment posted on the last article, "Seeking job" noted that the reviews about the EPO on glassdoor.com criticised that the EPO did not respect the rule of law. Glassdoor is only the tip of the iceberg. Märpel asked around. University graduates are organised in trade associations and these are not publicly accessible on the Internet. But they help spread the word.
It normally works as follows:
-trade associations keep lists of their members
-if you are a member and seek a job at the EPO, you look on the list for somebody already working at the EPO and contact them
-that person tells you his or her opinion of the place.
Märpel would however suggest to be cautious and not give a frank opinion on a work phone (which will soon all replaced by Skype / Lync anyway), but instead ask for a number and call back from a private phone. Not so long ago, a principal director went around and said that the EPO was looking for candidates and that it was each employee duty to tell their friends what a great employer the EPO was. As in "we are so desperate for candidates, that you must lie to your friends: tell them the EPO is great!".
Except that it is not. It is a place where not even your pension is secure years after you left it (Judgement 4052). It is a place where the appeal committee decides against the personal in more than 98% of the cases. It is a place which still plans to put employees on 5-years contracts: word is that President Campinos wants to restart that project.
It is also a place which invested billions in a dubious investment fund and committed to further invest hundreds of millions of earnings each year in the future.
Therefore, as could be expected, the EPO experiences great difficulties in finding candidates when recruiting. But this is fine, as will be shown in the following article: the first move of President Campinos shows how he will solve that problem.
Sunday, 29 July 2018
Thursday, 26 July 2018
A month and still nothing
It has been a month since AT-ILO judgements were published. Märpel had the curiosity to check whether Ion Brumme is listed in the EPO phone book and there is still no mention of his name. Märpel also checked whether Patrick Corcoran is listed: he has a room in The Hague, but still no phone number.
So it seems that the judgements are still not implemented.
So it seems that the judgements are still not implemented.
Friday, 13 July 2018
Judgements again
Märpel took a well deserved vacation as she was exhausted from all the events at the end of June, but the news kept coming in the mean time.
Two publications were issued about the 126th session of the AT-ILO. The first one, from Suepo, analyses the 17 judgments concerning the EPO and concludes that there is a lack of normative control and a clear bias in favour of the Organisation - to the detriment of staff. It can be downloaded here and is well worth a read:
https://suepo.org/documents/44975/57698.pdf
The second is the report from Laurent Germond, Director Employment law at the EPO (and a personal friend of the registrar. As it is only available on the EPO intranet, Märpel would like to make it publicly available here:
Report on the 126th session of the ILOAT
Following its 126th session, held from 23 April to 18 May 2018, the ILO Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT) on 26 June 2018 delivered in public 75 judgments on 96 cases concerning 21 international organisations, while recording 22 withdrawals. For the EPO, 17 judgments were delivered in 25 cases.
Out of these 17 EPO-related judgments, the Tribunal:
· dismissed the complaints in eighteen cases (Judgments 3983, 4041, 4044, 4045, 4046, 4048, 4049, 4050, 4053 and 4055), out of which nine were in summary procedure (Judgments 3983 and 4055);
· replied clearly in two cases to the Office's requests for interpretation and rejected the claims of one complainant whereby the Office did not implement properly a previous judgment (Judgments 3986 and 3989);
· granted in five cases the main claims of the complainants, two cases being referred back to the Office to enable for new decisions to be taken (Judgments 4051, 4042, 4043, 4047 and 4052) .
As regards disciplinary measures against staff or trade union representatives as well as against persons appointed by them, the EPO was aware that it is highly sensitive to impose such disciplinary measures. When looking at the two last sessions of the ILOAT, however, it emerges that in some cases (Judgments 3968, 3971, 4050) the misconduct and the sanction were confirmed by the Tribunal, while in others they were set aside (Judgments 4042, 4043, 4047, 4052), it being specified that the Tribunal left a margin of manoeuvre to the Office while referring two cases back to the Organisation (Judgments 4047 and 4052). The Tribunal also rejected as unfounded a claim for institutional harassment brought by a staff representative against the President of the Office (Judgment 4048). In the EPO's cases as well as in other International Organisations', the Tribunal conveyed the clear message that staff representatives are not immune from disciplinary sanctions, in particular when blocking the institutions or infringing colleagues' dignity. However, it also underlined that the administration should avoid being brought into the internal matters of a union.
The Tribunal validated as "balanced" the temporary composition of the Appeals Committee between 1 January and 30 June 2017, which was relied upon in light of the CSC's refusal to appoint members of the Appeals Committee (Judgment 4049). The Tribunal noted that two out of four members of the Appeals Committee were chosen "[b]y way of exception" among eligible staff members in the pool of staff representatives and that the composition was thus in accordance with the relevant provisions "which are not ambiguous". The ILOAT's judgment in this regard will bring stability for the Office's internal means of redress which operate under the authority of external Chair and Vice-Chairs since October 2017.
Wherever relevant medical issues are identified during a disciplinary procedure, the Tribunal clarified the duty of the Disciplinary Committee to order a medical assessment and determine its scope. The Tribunal also stressed the duty of staff to cooperate with medical proceedings, which is the counterpart to the Office's duty of care, and that in instances where a staff member refuses to undergo a required medical examination or to provide relevant medical background information, "the examination can be undertaken on the basis of documents, if necessary." (Judgment 3989, consideration 4; cf. Judgment 3986, consideration 8).
In sum, the EPO-related judgments should be taken as a reminder of the need for the administration and all staff members to work together to enter into a constructive social dialogue and, in case of litigation, ensure the functioning of the legal protection of staff through an efficient system of internal and external means of redress.
Laurent Germond, Director
Directorate Employment Law
Märpel thinks that Mr Germond wishes for " the administration and all staff members to work together " seem to forget that the it is the administration that dismissed staff members even when the appeal committee gave a positive opinion. He also seem to forget that the same administration created a new investigation unit with vast powers and absolutely no normative control. Last but not least, he also forgets that the same administration later modified the internal means of redress several times until they practically gave the administration 100% success.
Two publications were issued about the 126th session of the AT-ILO. The first one, from Suepo, analyses the 17 judgments concerning the EPO and concludes that there is a lack of normative control and a clear bias in favour of the Organisation - to the detriment of staff. It can be downloaded here and is well worth a read:
https://suepo.org/documents/44975/57698.pdf
The second is the report from Laurent Germond, Director Employment law at the EPO (and a personal friend of the registrar. As it is only available on the EPO intranet, Märpel would like to make it publicly available here:
Report on the 126th session of the ILOAT
Following its 126th session, held from 23 April to 18 May 2018, the ILO Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT) on 26 June 2018 delivered in public 75 judgments on 96 cases concerning 21 international organisations, while recording 22 withdrawals. For the EPO, 17 judgments were delivered in 25 cases.
Out of these 17 EPO-related judgments, the Tribunal:
· dismissed the complaints in eighteen cases (Judgments 3983, 4041, 4044, 4045, 4046, 4048, 4049, 4050, 4053 and 4055), out of which nine were in summary procedure (Judgments 3983 and 4055);
· replied clearly in two cases to the Office's requests for interpretation and rejected the claims of one complainant whereby the Office did not implement properly a previous judgment (Judgments 3986 and 3989);
· granted in five cases the main claims of the complainants, two cases being referred back to the Office to enable for new decisions to be taken (Judgments 4051, 4042, 4043, 4047 and 4052) .
As regards disciplinary measures against staff or trade union representatives as well as against persons appointed by them, the EPO was aware that it is highly sensitive to impose such disciplinary measures. When looking at the two last sessions of the ILOAT, however, it emerges that in some cases (Judgments 3968, 3971, 4050) the misconduct and the sanction were confirmed by the Tribunal, while in others they were set aside (Judgments 4042, 4043, 4047, 4052), it being specified that the Tribunal left a margin of manoeuvre to the Office while referring two cases back to the Organisation (Judgments 4047 and 4052). The Tribunal also rejected as unfounded a claim for institutional harassment brought by a staff representative against the President of the Office (Judgment 4048). In the EPO's cases as well as in other International Organisations', the Tribunal conveyed the clear message that staff representatives are not immune from disciplinary sanctions, in particular when blocking the institutions or infringing colleagues' dignity. However, it also underlined that the administration should avoid being brought into the internal matters of a union.
The Tribunal validated as "balanced" the temporary composition of the Appeals Committee between 1 January and 30 June 2017, which was relied upon in light of the CSC's refusal to appoint members of the Appeals Committee (Judgment 4049). The Tribunal noted that two out of four members of the Appeals Committee were chosen "[b]y way of exception" among eligible staff members in the pool of staff representatives and that the composition was thus in accordance with the relevant provisions "which are not ambiguous". The ILOAT's judgment in this regard will bring stability for the Office's internal means of redress which operate under the authority of external Chair and Vice-Chairs since October 2017.
Wherever relevant medical issues are identified during a disciplinary procedure, the Tribunal clarified the duty of the Disciplinary Committee to order a medical assessment and determine its scope. The Tribunal also stressed the duty of staff to cooperate with medical proceedings, which is the counterpart to the Office's duty of care, and that in instances where a staff member refuses to undergo a required medical examination or to provide relevant medical background information, "the examination can be undertaken on the basis of documents, if necessary." (Judgment 3989, consideration 4; cf. Judgment 3986, consideration 8).
In sum, the EPO-related judgments should be taken as a reminder of the need for the administration and all staff members to work together to enter into a constructive social dialogue and, in case of litigation, ensure the functioning of the legal protection of staff through an efficient system of internal and external means of redress.
Laurent Germond, Director
Directorate Employment Law
Märpel thinks that Mr Germond wishes for " the administration and all staff members to work together " seem to forget that the it is the administration that dismissed staff members even when the appeal committee gave a positive opinion. He also seem to forget that the same administration created a new investigation unit with vast powers and absolutely no normative control. Last but not least, he also forgets that the same administration later modified the internal means of redress several times until they practically gave the administration 100% success.
Monday, 2 July 2018
Another article
Another article about the EPO was published yesterday in heise.de (in German): Europäisches Patentamt: Große Baustellen für den neuen Präsidenten.
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Europaeisches-Patentamt-Grosse-Baustellen-fuer-den-neuen-Praesidenten-4095256.html
https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Europaeisches-Patentamt-Grosse-Baustellen-fuer-den-neuen-Praesidenten-4095256.html
Sunday, 1 July 2018
IP Watch article
The web magazine "Intellectual Property Watch" published an article about the EPO priorities on 19.06. The article highlights the fundamental governance problem of the EPO and is well worth a read this day when the EPO welcomes a new President.
Reading the article needs a subscription, but Märpel also notes that the article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Märpel can thus republish it here, under the same licence.
The original article can be found at this address:
http://www.ip-watch.org/2018/06/19/epo-staff-users-list-priorities-incoming-president
EPO Staff, Users List Priorities For Incoming President
19/06/2018 BY DUGIE STANDEFORD FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WATCH
·
As the European Patent Office (EPO) prepares to welcome a new president, staff members and patent practitioners are setting out their priorities and suggestions for the newcomer, António Campinos. Topping the list for patent examiners is ending the contentious relationship between management and employees. Patent attorneys and litigators, meanwhile, want to see more attention paid to creating a fair balance between the speed of patent grants and patent quality.
Campinos, who is currently head of the European IP Office, will take over at the EPO on 1 July for Benoit Battistelli, who has been president since 2010.
Staff Pans "Single-Minded Focus on Efficiency"
In an 8 June discussion paper [pdf], "Doing what needs to be done – the right time and opportunity for improving governance, transparency and accountability at the EPO," the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) highlighted various governance issues "that threaten to have a negative impact on the overall functioning" of the Office and offered several recommendations for improvement.
Two key concerns, SUEPO said, are the composition of the Administrative Council (AC), the EPO's governing body, and its transparency. Among other things, the union wants the office to hold the required five-yearly conference of AC government representatives soon to discuss questions about governance, patent quality and social policies, and said the council should start publishing its agendas and minutes and allowing public access to its discussions.
Another issue is the governance of the Boards of Appeal, which deteriorated after Battistelli suspended a board member (IPW, Europe, 12 June 2017) and allegedly refused to publish important BoA decisions "that were not to his liking," according to SUEPO. It wants the presidency's decision-making powers over the BoA fully transferred to the president of the BoA, along with the eventual transformation of the board into a separate organ of the EPO governed by a council for the judiciary.
The union also seeks changes in the office's human resources governance, including a move away from the Battistelli administration's "single-minded focus on 'efficiency'" (productivity).
"The deficits in governance, transparency, accountability, due process, legal certainty for employees, legal validity of patents for the applicants are manifest," SUEPO said. "It is high time for these to be addressed in order to restore trust" of applicants and the European public in the EPO as a patent-granting authority on one hand and an attractive employer on the other, it said.
"With a new President assuming operational responsibility for the EPO on 1 July, the timing is ideal to discuss these issues with the stakeholders," including the staff, the letter said.
In response to SUEPO's paper, the EPO pointed to its 12 June report, "Modernising the EPO for excellence and sustainability. Achievements 2010 to 2018." http://www.epo.org/service-support/publications.html?pubid=170#tab3 The report "presents a factual account of the results obtained at the EPO over the last eight years," its spokesman emailed. "As you will note from the contents, it provides a verifiable and measurable overview of the progress that has been made in multiple areas at the EPO and relating to the subjects mentioned in the [SUEPO paper]. The Office specifically called attention to the section on transparency, which it said addresses the measures it has taken to provide its users and the public transparency in areas such as social conditions, the work of the AC and patent quality.
Push for Speed Worries Practitioners
Patent attorneys are closely monitoring several changes Battistelli spearheaded. Some of those modifications — expedited timelines for obtaining and challenging patents — were introduced to speed up the patent examination and opposition processes, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP (London) patent attorney Leythem Wall said in an interview. One potential question is whether the system is moving too fast given the finite resources at the EPO, he said. The EPO "generally does a tremendous job," but if the process is faster, the question is whether in the long term quality can keep up, he said.
Another question is whether users of the EPO patent system could have more of a choice as to the speed and timeline of their patent applications, Wall said. There is no way to pause the process or slow it down beyond a few months, he said. The EPO proposed a suspended examination period for up to three years, but there has been no decision to implement, he said. The incoming president could revisit such a scheme, he said.
Some have said they see a change not so much with regard to the process of examining applications but in third-party challenges, Wall said. Since the process is now faster, it places more pressure on third parties to get their challenges right and means they may need to invest more in challenging patents, he said. For examination, following fairly recent changes in their Examination Guidelines, the EPO tends to offer more suggestions on how to overcome objections, which is good, but at the same time it appears to be getting quicker to summon parties to oral hearings at the office, which potentially imposes more costs on users, he said.
The new president should also address the question of hiring for the Boards of Appeal, because while the examination and opposition processes are speeding up, it's taking longer for appeals to reach conclusions, Wall said.
"Battistelli's term started quietly but as he built his mission to change the working practices there you'll have seen the morale impact," emailed Kilburn & Strode LLP (London) European patent attorney Gwilym Roberts. What's odd, he said, is that even the EPO workforce agreed that productivity needed improving, but Battistelli's methods caused the problems.
The office "must keep addressing its backlog," Roberts said. It's still common to see pending applications that are 10 or more years old, and the EPO "remains slower than most major jurisdictions." It's not acceptable to have more than half the lifetime of some patents spent in the patent pending phase, he said, adding that nevertheless, the office "provides amongst the best quality patents in the world and that reputation must not be prejudiced."
New "early certainty" measures may prove to be the turnaround, although some are achieved by putting additional pressure on the applicant, which is unfair, Roberts said. "But the expectation of a quicker turnaround is an important step, as long as corners are not cut in the examination process."
Campinos "has been very quiet so far," said Roberts. "He will need to walk a tightrope balancing speed and quality, with a pack of baying examiners below if he slips up. It would be helpful to hear a little more about his plans to put the minds of applicants, attorneys and most importantly his workforce to rest." Viewed from the outside, "Battistielli did achieve improvement albeit at the cost of major unrest," Roberts said. "If his successor can carry on the good work without the unwelcome unrest, the EPO will get itself back into pole position."
There are two things the EPO, and every patent office, should continuously try to improve, emailed Taylor Wessing LLP (London) patent litigator Christopher Thornham. One is quality: "How is the EPO embracing use of [artificial intelligence] to help improve the search and examination process to get better quality?" The second issue is speed: Taking a long time to examine and grants patents creates uncertainty for the public, Thornham said.
"This is compounded by a slow post-grant opposition procedure that can take many years," he added. "How is the EPO working to address and improve this?"
In a 14 June open letter to the current and incoming presidents and others, four German patent law firms said the office's "overreaching desire for high productivity" is causing problems. Grünecker, Hoffmann Eitle, Maiwald and Vossius & Partner voiced "great concern" with EPO modifications to the incentive systems for patent application examinations, saying they seem to be "increasingly directed towards rewarding or even requesting rapid 'termination' of proceedings and a correspondingly higher productivity. This has resulted in penalization of detailed and thorough assessment of cases."
While an increase in the average speed of proceedings is welcome, the overreaching productivity has led to several problems, the firms said, including, among other things, less effective prior art searches and examinations. If examinations are shorter, the EPO's high fees can't be justified, and patents that have been examined less thoroughly are more exposed to challenges, the attorneys said.
The EPO "needs to balance the interests of the public against the interests of patent applicants," they said.
Moreover, if users of the European system gain the impression that granted patents can't be relied upon due to insufficient searches and examinations, they may increasingly be discouraged from filing European patents, which "might unhinge the entire patent system," the letter said. It urged the office to set up new patent examination incentive schemes.
Reading the article needs a subscription, but Märpel also notes that the article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Märpel can thus republish it here, under the same licence.
The original article can be found at this address:
http://www.ip-watch.org/2018/06/19/epo-staff-users-list-priorities-incoming-president
EPO Staff, Users List Priorities For Incoming President
19/06/2018 BY DUGIE STANDEFORD FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY WATCH
·
As the European Patent Office (EPO) prepares to welcome a new president, staff members and patent practitioners are setting out their priorities and suggestions for the newcomer, António Campinos. Topping the list for patent examiners is ending the contentious relationship between management and employees. Patent attorneys and litigators, meanwhile, want to see more attention paid to creating a fair balance between the speed of patent grants and patent quality.
Campinos, who is currently head of the European IP Office, will take over at the EPO on 1 July for Benoit Battistelli, who has been president since 2010.
Staff Pans "Single-Minded Focus on Efficiency"
In an 8 June discussion paper [pdf], "Doing what needs to be done – the right time and opportunity for improving governance, transparency and accountability at the EPO," the Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) highlighted various governance issues "that threaten to have a negative impact on the overall functioning" of the Office and offered several recommendations for improvement.
Two key concerns, SUEPO said, are the composition of the Administrative Council (AC), the EPO's governing body, and its transparency. Among other things, the union wants the office to hold the required five-yearly conference of AC government representatives soon to discuss questions about governance, patent quality and social policies, and said the council should start publishing its agendas and minutes and allowing public access to its discussions.
Another issue is the governance of the Boards of Appeal, which deteriorated after Battistelli suspended a board member (IPW, Europe, 12 June 2017) and allegedly refused to publish important BoA decisions "that were not to his liking," according to SUEPO. It wants the presidency's decision-making powers over the BoA fully transferred to the president of the BoA, along with the eventual transformation of the board into a separate organ of the EPO governed by a council for the judiciary.
The union also seeks changes in the office's human resources governance, including a move away from the Battistelli administration's "single-minded focus on 'efficiency'" (productivity).
"The deficits in governance, transparency, accountability, due process, legal certainty for employees, legal validity of patents for the applicants are manifest," SUEPO said. "It is high time for these to be addressed in order to restore trust" of applicants and the European public in the EPO as a patent-granting authority on one hand and an attractive employer on the other, it said.
"With a new President assuming operational responsibility for the EPO on 1 July, the timing is ideal to discuss these issues with the stakeholders," including the staff, the letter said.
In response to SUEPO's paper, the EPO pointed to its 12 June report, "Modernising the EPO for excellence and sustainability. Achievements 2010 to 2018." http://www.epo.org/service-support/publications.html?pubid=170#tab3 The report "presents a factual account of the results obtained at the EPO over the last eight years," its spokesman emailed. "As you will note from the contents, it provides a verifiable and measurable overview of the progress that has been made in multiple areas at the EPO and relating to the subjects mentioned in the [SUEPO paper]. The Office specifically called attention to the section on transparency, which it said addresses the measures it has taken to provide its users and the public transparency in areas such as social conditions, the work of the AC and patent quality.
Push for Speed Worries Practitioners
Patent attorneys are closely monitoring several changes Battistelli spearheaded. Some of those modifications — expedited timelines for obtaining and challenging patents — were introduced to speed up the patent examination and opposition processes, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP (London) patent attorney Leythem Wall said in an interview. One potential question is whether the system is moving too fast given the finite resources at the EPO, he said. The EPO "generally does a tremendous job," but if the process is faster, the question is whether in the long term quality can keep up, he said.
Another question is whether users of the EPO patent system could have more of a choice as to the speed and timeline of their patent applications, Wall said. There is no way to pause the process or slow it down beyond a few months, he said. The EPO proposed a suspended examination period for up to three years, but there has been no decision to implement, he said. The incoming president could revisit such a scheme, he said.
Some have said they see a change not so much with regard to the process of examining applications but in third-party challenges, Wall said. Since the process is now faster, it places more pressure on third parties to get their challenges right and means they may need to invest more in challenging patents, he said. For examination, following fairly recent changes in their Examination Guidelines, the EPO tends to offer more suggestions on how to overcome objections, which is good, but at the same time it appears to be getting quicker to summon parties to oral hearings at the office, which potentially imposes more costs on users, he said.
The new president should also address the question of hiring for the Boards of Appeal, because while the examination and opposition processes are speeding up, it's taking longer for appeals to reach conclusions, Wall said.
"Battistelli's term started quietly but as he built his mission to change the working practices there you'll have seen the morale impact," emailed Kilburn & Strode LLP (London) European patent attorney Gwilym Roberts. What's odd, he said, is that even the EPO workforce agreed that productivity needed improving, but Battistelli's methods caused the problems.
The office "must keep addressing its backlog," Roberts said. It's still common to see pending applications that are 10 or more years old, and the EPO "remains slower than most major jurisdictions." It's not acceptable to have more than half the lifetime of some patents spent in the patent pending phase, he said, adding that nevertheless, the office "provides amongst the best quality patents in the world and that reputation must not be prejudiced."
New "early certainty" measures may prove to be the turnaround, although some are achieved by putting additional pressure on the applicant, which is unfair, Roberts said. "But the expectation of a quicker turnaround is an important step, as long as corners are not cut in the examination process."
Campinos "has been very quiet so far," said Roberts. "He will need to walk a tightrope balancing speed and quality, with a pack of baying examiners below if he slips up. It would be helpful to hear a little more about his plans to put the minds of applicants, attorneys and most importantly his workforce to rest." Viewed from the outside, "Battistielli did achieve improvement albeit at the cost of major unrest," Roberts said. "If his successor can carry on the good work without the unwelcome unrest, the EPO will get itself back into pole position."
There are two things the EPO, and every patent office, should continuously try to improve, emailed Taylor Wessing LLP (London) patent litigator Christopher Thornham. One is quality: "How is the EPO embracing use of [artificial intelligence] to help improve the search and examination process to get better quality?" The second issue is speed: Taking a long time to examine and grants patents creates uncertainty for the public, Thornham said.
"This is compounded by a slow post-grant opposition procedure that can take many years," he added. "How is the EPO working to address and improve this?"
In a 14 June open letter to the current and incoming presidents and others, four German patent law firms said the office's "overreaching desire for high productivity" is causing problems. Grünecker, Hoffmann Eitle, Maiwald and Vossius & Partner voiced "great concern" with EPO modifications to the incentive systems for patent application examinations, saying they seem to be "increasingly directed towards rewarding or even requesting rapid 'termination' of proceedings and a correspondingly higher productivity. This has resulted in penalization of detailed and thorough assessment of cases."
While an increase in the average speed of proceedings is welcome, the overreaching productivity has led to several problems, the firms said, including, among other things, less effective prior art searches and examinations. If examinations are shorter, the EPO's high fees can't be justified, and patents that have been examined less thoroughly are more exposed to challenges, the attorneys said.
The EPO "needs to balance the interests of the public against the interests of patent applicants," they said.
Moreover, if users of the European system gain the impression that granted patents can't be relied upon due to insufficient searches and examinations, they may increasingly be discouraged from filing European patents, which "might unhinge the entire patent system," the letter said. It urged the office to set up new patent examination incentive schemes.
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