快猫短视频

OLD ideas and inventions could be mistakenly granted European patents unless
examiners鈥� workloads are reduced, according to the staff union at the European
Patent Office. EPO examiners say they now have to process so many applications
that they can no longer do their jobs properly and have begun industrial action
in a bid to get staffing levels increased. The examiners at the EPO鈥檚 head
office in Munich and branch offices in the Hague, Berlin and Vienna staged
warning strikes earlier this year, but failed to win any concessions.

Some 19 European states now support the EPO system of accepting one patent
application for many countries, and as a result the number of applications filed
is rising by around 10 per cent each year. SUEPO argues that staffing levels are
lagging behind the growing workload, and that examiners do not have enough time
to study new applications carefully and search for prior inventions which may
invalidate claims. SUEPO chairman Desmond Radford says measures taken by the EPO
on 1 January to monitor each employee鈥檚 output was 鈥渁 step too far鈥� and obliges
examiners to do 鈥渟hoddy鈥� searches.

After a two-day stoppage last month, examiners are now delaying searches on
non-urgent applications. Urgent cases are searched, but the granting of formal
patents is held back. So inventors have to wait longer before they can enforce
any patents they win.

An EPO spokesman told 快猫短视频: 鈥淲e accept that the workload
has been increasing, but hope that more use of computerised records will help.
We are also trying to streamline [work flow] by asking the same people to
examine a case and search for prior art. These tasks have been separate until
苍辞飞.鈥�