Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights holds telephone conference

In order to coordinate the drafting of a position paper on proceedings before the board of appeals of the European Patent Office (EPO), the BIO Deutschland Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights held a telephone conference in mid-July.

Members of the working group agreed to focus on two core demands: 

• Setting the maximum length of proceedings at 24 months and
• Establishing a derogation for SMEs with regard to appeal fees (WG’s internal proposal calls for reducing these fees by 25 to 50 percent).

With respect to the first demand, meeting participants discussed the inter partes review (IPR) proceedings before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which enables third parties to have the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review patentability. These proceedings are restricted to a maximum length of 18 months. It was decided to assess whether the IPR proceedings are comparable to those before the EPO. Participants also discussed the necessity of adapting the description for patent applications.