Tuesday 1 February 2011

EPO litigation guide now out, but not so fast ...!

Under the title "An overview of the national patent litigation systems in Europe", the European Patent Office has published a notice that it has issued the second edition of Patent Litigation in Europe.  This edition
"provides an overview of the national patent litigation systems across the European Patent Organisation's 38 Contracting States. This study presents an at-a-glance description of the different national revocation, nullity and infringement procedures currently in place. The competent courts dealing with these matters at first instance and appeal are also depicted".
I found out about this from the excellent Axel Horns, whose IP::JUR weblog contains a bright, articulate and thoroughly justified rant at the EPO's decision to limit access of this presumably useful document to those who fill in a form which gives the EPO a good deal of personal data which, one might think, is irrelevant to the discharge of its functions.

Good news is that Axel has updated this information with the good news (via @topalovi)  that, if you seek the second edition via the EPO's search facility, you can get to it directly without having to fill in any forms at all, here.  Beware: it's 104 pages in length (though some are blank!).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

...or you could just fill in random information when filling out the *quite short* form.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous -- what! Random information! A fraud on the Patent Office, I say!

pmw said...

Am I missing something here? All it asks you to provide is country and profession (no name or email address required). I don't see how this could be deemed a 'good deal of personal information'.