epi Information 2/2009

Information 2/2009 Committee Reports 45
Report of the EPO Finances Committee
J. Boff (GB)
Chairman
A fee strategy debate started at the March Administrative
Council (AC) and will require a lot of attention this
year. The Office will be consulting widely on sustainable
financing of the European patent system.
EPO Paper CA/72/09 and its many annexes present
some overall discussion on fee policy, and CA/59/09,
CA/62/09 and CA/51/09 make some contribution.
I quote from CA/64/09 which summarises the results
of the AC discussions and comment below: –
34. After a lengthy debate during which the delegations
stressed the quality of the Office’s preparatory work,
the chairman, noting that areas of broad consensus
had emerged, summed up as follows:
35. I. Perspective
The delegations agreed on the need to take account
of the economic and financial context in Europe and
worldwide. That meant not adding to the financial
burden on industry, and that the Office had to
master its costs in order to assure its future.
COMMENT – Good news.
II. Tackling costs the priority
The Office’s priority had to be to increase output and
productivity, setting itself annual target figures. Salary
trends had to be correlated with productivity,
and discussions initiated on reforming the „social
package“ (pension and social-security schemes).
COMMENT – Good news.
III. IFRS
The delegations took the view that whilst the use of
IFRS as the „generally accepted accounting principles“
under Article 42(1) EPC could not be called
into question, thought should be given to how they
were applied and what conclusions were drawn. The
main aim was to maintain and strengthen the
Office’s operational capacity. That meant, in particular,
an active HR management policy and investment
in electronic tools. Lastly, the delegations felt
that negative equity of about 80% could be considered
acceptable.
COMMENT – epi have been saying to the EPO for some
time that IFRS does not make decisions, it presents data
from which decisions can be made.
IV. Fees
The delegations were against any overall increase in
fees, but prepared to re-examine their structure. Any
fee increase had to be preceded by lower costs and
higher productivity, and the balance kept between
procedural and renewal fees.
COMMENT – Good news on the overall increase in fees.
However the balance issue needs to be investigated. It is
not clear whether „renewal fees“ means renewal fees
on granted patents or includes renewal fees on pending
applications.
V. Structures and behaviour
The delegations recommended studying, as part of
the general objective of „raising the bar“, any
measure likely to facilitate the Office’s work by
easing, streamlining and simplifying procedures
and processes. Also, fee adjustments could be used
to counter procedural abuse by users.
COMMENT – This is good news if the fee adjustments are
chosen with appropriate regard to applicant behaviour,
but this has not happened before. The claims fees fiasco
occurred despite the user community making it clear that
the increase in claims fees would result in extreme
responses from applicants. It also appears that no
account has been taken in CA/35/09 (Basic Assumptions
for the Business Plan and Budget 2010) of the increase in
filings in 2010 that will be a consequence of the transitional
provisions in CA/D2/09 introducing deadlines for
filing divisional applications. This makes budget forecasts
unreliable.
epi continues to press for greater involvement in the
decision making process.
VI. Harmonisation of renewal fees
One idea here was to re-examine the minimum
amounts, with a view to bringing their levels closer
to the thresholds required. The ongoing Community
patent discussions could have a positive effect.
Amending the distribution key was out of the question.
COMMENT – This is very tricky. Harmonising fees may
affect Member States ability to support innovation in
their territory, and may have a negative effect in view of
the widely different populations of the Member States.
For example, if the same harmonised fee applied to
Luxembourg and Germany the cost per customer paid by
users would vary enormously leading to even greater
differences in validation rates. Similarly the Community
patent discussions could have some nasty effects on
national patent offices.
36. In the light of that, the Council asked the Office
to make, as soon as possible, specific proposals for
the different areas identified and in line with the
approach outlined.
37. These proposals would be examined in accordance
with standard Council procedure, i. e. passing
via the appropriate committee (Budget and Finance;
Patent Law; Technical and Operational Support) for
the topics in question.
38. In line with its brief, the Council’s Board would
monitor the Office’s elaboration of proposals meet-