International Patent Institute

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The International Patent Institute (or IIB standing for Institut International des Brevets, its French name) was an intellectual property organisation established on June 6, 1947 in The Hague, Netherlands, by a set of European countries, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It was integrated into the European Patent Organisation on January 1, 1978. Its purpose was to centralize patent searching and archiving as well as the resources needed for the prior art searches for its member countries. [1]

The integration of the International Patent Institute into the European Patent Organisation led in practice to the creation of the branch of the European Patent Office (EPO) at Rijswijk in The Netherlands, a town close to The Hague. This branch still exists and is one of three locations of the EPO (along with Munich and Berlin) where European patent applications may be filed.

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European Patent Convention International patent treaty

The European Patent Convention (EPC), also known as the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to which European patents are granted. The term European patent is used to refer to patents granted under the European Patent Convention. However, a European patent is not a unitary right, but a group of essentially independent nationally enforceable, nationally revocable patents, subject to central revocation or narrowing as a group pursuant to two types of unified, post-grant procedures: a time-limited opposition procedure, which can be initiated by any person except the patent proprietor, and limitation and revocation procedures, which can be initiated by the patent proprietor only.

The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, signed in Paris, France, on 20 March 1883, was one of the first intellectual property treaties. It established a Union for the protection of industrial property. The Convention is currently still in force. The substantive provisions of the Convention fall into three main categories: national treatment, priority right and common rules.

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London Agreement (2000)

The London Agreement, formally the Agreement on the application of Article 65 of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents and sometimes referred to as the London Protocol, is a patent law agreement concluded in London on 17 October 2000 and aimed at reducing the translation costs of European patents granted under the European Patent Convention (EPC). The London Agreement is an optional agreement between member states of the European Patent Organisation, and has not altered other language requirements applying to European patent applications prior to grant.

The draft European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), or formally the Draft Agreement on the establishment of a European patent litigation system, was a proposed patent law agreement aimed at creating an "optional protocol to the European Patent Convention (EPC) which would commit its signatory states to an integrated judicial system, including uniform rules of procedure and a common appeal court". It differed from the Unified Patent Court Agreement in that the EPLA negotiations were coordinated from the side of the European Patent Office, rather than from the European Council and Commission and therefore also offered the possibility for non-EU states to participate.

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The Institute of Professional Representatives before the European Patent Office, also known as European Patent Institute (epi), is a professional association of European patent attorneys and an international non-governmental public law corporation. It was founded on October 21, 1977 by the Administrative Council of the European Patent Organisation by adopting the Regulation on the establishment of an institute of professional representatives before the European Patent Office. All European patent attorneys, i.e. all persons entitled to act as professional representatives before the EPO, are members of the Institute.

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References

  1. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Patents, innovation and economic performance: OECD conference proceedings, 2004, page 28.