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European Patent Office Scotches Appeal For Review
News Court of Appeal judge Lord Justice Jacob asked the European Patent Office (EPO) to review the rules on software patents, saying that several EPO rulings contradicted each other. The decisions of the EPO Boards of Appeal are mutually contradictory...
[March 22, 2007, 8:35]
Patent Inspectors Strike Over Quality Fears
News Employees at the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich and Berlin held a strike on Tuesday against proposed changes to the patent assessment process, which they claim will reduce patent quality. Wolfgang Manntz, the chair of the Berlin branch of...
[May 10, 2006, 16:40]
Patent Injustice For Small Software Companies
Talkback Ignoring the tricksy "per se", that the UKPO/EPO use to pretend (absurdly) that they were talking either about written source code or about whole applications or about some phantom "non-technical" kind of software, when they are forced into a...
[June 29, 2005, 23:44]
Survey: European Patents Have Quality Problems
Talkback It is also an indictment of the system whereby the EPO makes its "profit" by the number of patents granted. I wonder if, should the funding of the EPO be made by central funding from the EC, there would be an increase in the quality of inspection?
[July 10, 2004, 0:00]
European Patent Office: Moving To An Open Platform Via IBM Technology And Java
White Papers Embarking on its migration from OS/2 to an open, Java-based architecture, the EPO was cognizant of the risks - both technical and cultural. The EPO’s solution is a suite of Java-based document management applications used by the EPO’s internal...
[March 2, 2004, 23:00]
Survey: European Patents Have Quality Problems
News The majority of staff at the European Patent Office (EPO) feel they do not have enough time for patent examinations and back-up examinations, according to a survey of 1,300 patent examiners conducted by the staff union.
[June 8, 2004, 13:40]
EC: Software Patents Will Still Be Granted
Talkback The EPO can grant an infinite number of invalid sw patents and grind the proponents for a free market down that way. Better to focus on the cause and get the EPO to stop granting sw patents in the first place and, since they know they are invalid...
[July 22, 2005, 9:10]
EC Slipping Software Patents 'through Backdoor'
Talkback "Firstly, the EPO does not grant "software patents" I doubt there's *anyone* who could still believe such absurd lies but one can always check the EPO patent database for oneself or look at these: http://webshop.ffii.de/index.en.html http://swpat...
[October 7, 2005, 11:28]
EC Slipping Software Patents 'through Backdoor'
Talkback Firstly, the EPO does not grant "software patents" - it grants patents for some inventions that use software, but that is a different thing entirely. In fact, all EC member states except Malta are members of the EPO (Malta is a candidate country...
[October 6, 2005, 22:15]
EC: Software Is Not Patentable
Talkback All the European Parliament's statement really says, is that when prosecuting Community patents, the EPO will be bound by Community law instead of the EPC. This makes sense, as Community patents and EPC patents are separate, even if they will be...
[May 24, 2006, 17:00]
EC: Software Is Not Patentable
News The European Commission said last week that computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation, and that the European Patent Office (EPO) will be bound by this law.
[May 24, 2006, 15:25]
McAfee Attacks Symantec's Product Launches
News Vimal Solanki, senior director of worldwide product marketing for McAfee, said: "Symantec is seven years behind McAfee — ePO version 1.0 came out in 2000. McAfee says that ePO is in beta for version 4.0, rather than a first version beta like...
[June 14, 2007, 11:00]
SMEs Don't Get Their Fair Share Of EU Patents
News The study -- which may contain inaccuracies, according to its author -- found that only 20 percent of patents issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) are held by SMEs, with the remaining patents held by larger companies.
[June 9, 2005, 18:35]
Patent Office Wants Debate On Software Directive
Talkback But the first claim is belied by the contents of the EPO database - as is well known - and the second claim is belied by the UKPO's own record and it's database contains some of the very worst examples of US style patent madness (GB2243467...
[February 4, 2005, 14:31]
IT Patent Issues Simplified For Businesses
News The updated Patent Convention has been 10 years in the making, and updates the original 1973 agreement with more flexibility, more legal certainty, simpler procedures and reduced costs, the European Patent Office (EPO) said.
[December 14, 2007, 15:28]
Help & HowTo: Slammer
News To effect the update, run the console auto update utility on the ePO server (not ePO console). The havoc wreaked by the Sapphire worm, also known as Slammer and SQLExp, could have been avoided if a patch issued by Microsoft last July was administered.
[January 27, 2003, 10:18]
Software Patent Limits 'go Too Far'
Talkback On the issue of *what* should be patentable, the patent lawyers, and in particular the ones working for the European Patent Office EPO or within the EU bureaucracy, are most definitely parties to the case.
[October 1, 2003, 15:58]
EC Pushes On With Europe-wide Patents
News If EPO appeal judges were independent of the Patent Office and worked in a different location then there "wouldn't be a problem with them being part of a European Patent Court", according to Judge Jacob.
[January 16, 2006, 16:10]
Europe Honours Father Of The One-chip CPU
News Former Intel engineer Federico Faggin has received an award from the European Commission (EC) and the European Patent Office (EPO) to honour his role in the development of the microprocessor. The awards, jointly organised by the EC and the EPO...
[May 4, 2006, 12:10]
EC: Software Is Not Patentable
Talkback My email to the EPO: I wish to inform you that I actually agree with your decision, that software patents are not to be issued or respected. A patent on software is identicle to a Patent on a cook book.
[May 25, 2006, 8:27]
