epi Information 2/2009

48 Committee Reports Information 2/2009
Report of the Litigation Committee
May 2009
E. Lyndon-Stanford (GB)
Chairman
The Officers
Dr. Ferenc Török (HU) has been elected Vice-Chairman
and Dr. Rainer Beetz (AT) has been elected an Associate
Member. Associate Members receive committee papers
and can participate in discussions but cannot vote and
must pay their own expenses for attendance at meetings.
Dr. Gilbert Voortmans has been appointed the
liaison member for the Editorial Committee.
LitCom meetings
In order to avoid the cost and consumption of time in
holding formal meetings, the Committee has been
experimenting with e-mail debates, an Extranet debate
and a mixed Extranet and e-mail debate, but no completely
satisfactory procedure has yet been found.
The European and Community Patents Court and
Court Statute, draft agreement
The latest draft agreement is 7928/09, dated 23 rd March
2009. For the May 2009 Board meeting, the Litigation
Committee did not have time to fully study and debate
the draft agreement but made initial comments.
We noted that Article 15(a)(2)(b) has not been
amended so that there can be split jurisdiction. We
noted that the Court Rules of Procedure will no longer
be attached to the agreement and will be adopted by the
Mixed Committee (Article 22).
We considered that present Article 28 (representation)
is the best we can achieve. The language of Article 28(2)
has been clarified and it is clear that EPA’s „with appropriate
qualifications“ will be able to represent, i. e. the
EPA’s need not have any representation rights in their
own countries. The Rules of Procedure will determine the
extra qualification an EPA must have. Article 28(2) is an
important provision and would be susceptible to attack
by attorneys-at-law. The conclusion of the Board was
that it was essential for EPA’s to lobby their national
institutes and their government representatives, which is
a task the individual members of the Board have
assumed. The right of patent attorneys to assist has
been re-inserted, Article 28(2a). The definition of what a
patent attorney is will be in the Rules of Procedure.
Article 58 specifies how the opt-out operates in the
seven year transitional period. This has not been
changed although the epi requested that the opt-out
should not be limited in time. The opt-out is for EPC
applications filed or EPC patents granted before the
entry into force. If patentees wish to continue to use
national courts, they will have to file national patent
applications.
Report of the Online Communications Committee (OCC)
R. Burt (GB)
Chairman
Two meetings have been held of the OCC with the EPO
team lead by Mr François Knauer since the November
2008 Council meeting.
Update on statistics
1) In the latest available figures (February 2009), 58%
of all filings are being carried out online (up from
55% in September 2008). This headline figure
breaks down as 62% of PCT applications, 54% of
direct EP applications, and 59% of Euro-PCTapplications
filed online.
2) Since the launch of the opposition plug-in on March
5 2009, a total of 156 submissions had been filed
online in opposition proceedings been made in this
way by April 26. It was clarified that these numbers
do not necessarily represent complete oppositions
filed online. 75 submissions were filed in appeal