EU and Russia to harmonise intellectual property rights

The work is funded by a €500,000 EU project, which over the next 12 months will examine the current Russian patent legislation, make recommendations on how to converge it with the European legislation, and advise on the development of patent guidelines that can be used by patent examiners at Rospatent.

The project aims to streamline Russia’s patent application, registration and processing procedure to bring it into line with EPO’s approach and to encourage the teaching of IP economics in Russia.

Experts involved in the project will also address the Russian system of granting supplementary protection for pharmaceuticals, in the light of the current European administrative and judicial practice.

Top of the patent pops

Meanwhile, the preliminary results of a survey of IP lawyers and attorneys show that the EPO is seen as the leader in terms of patent quality.

More than 450 practitioners, both in-house IP counsel and attorneys working in private practices, have so far responded to the Annual IP Executive Benchmarking Survey carried out by Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine and Thomson Reuters.

According to IAM, 70 per cent of in-house respondents believe that the EPO’s patent quality is excellent or very good. In the same group, 26 per cent said that patent quality at the EPO has improved over the last year, while 71 per cent believe it has stayed the same. Only 3 per cent believe that the quality of patents issued by the EPO has got worse.

The EPO also scored top for quality among private practices, with 56 per cent saying that patent quality is excellent or very good. Around 29 per cent say patent quality has improved in the past 12 months, while 64 per cent have noticed no change from last year and 7 per cent said quality had decreased. Final results of the survey are expected in January.

No new president as yet

The Administrative Council of the EPO heard the four candidates for the Presidency put their case last week, but no-one obtained the required three-quarters majority. The election process will resume with the same candidates in December.