The European Patent Convention

COMMENTARY
ON THE EUROPEAN PATENT CONVENTION
AND THE CASE LAW OF THE BOARDS OF APPEAL
OF THE EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE

CLÉMENT PAYRAUDEAU

European patent law is of paramount importance on two accounts.

On the one hand, from a practical point of view, the European patent system has become the ordinary way to protect inventions in Europe (135,000 European patent applications were filed in 2006) for nationals of the Member Countries of the Munich Convention (in 2006, 65,000 patent applications out of 135,000 were filed by nationals of the Member Countries) and nationals of third countries (in 2006, 69,500 patent applications out of 135,000 were filed by nationals of third countries, the United States and Japan ranking first).
This success finds its origins in the importance, now crucial and essential, of the inventions for the economic and social development and progress and in the correlative need for an efficient and easily accessible legal protection of inventions.
In this respect, the Munich Convention has largely simplified the access to a legal protection of inventions by establishing a unified system for granting national patents at the end of a single procedure with one central office, the European Patent Office.

On the other hand, from a theoretical point of view, European patent law greatly influences national patent law of the Member Countries, not only because the European rules of patentability have been transposed into the Member States’ laws but also because the verification of the granted patents’ validity and their interpretation fall within the jurisdiction of national courts.
European patent law, such as established by the Munich Convention, and as continuously developed by the Office’s practice and the case law of its Boards of Appeal, is necessarily entering into national patent laws.

Mr. Clément Payraudeau’s book gives an overall and logical picture of this complex European patent system with a commentary on the European Patent Convention enriched by the literature and the most exhaustive European case law.

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Véron & Associés is honoured to host on its website, with the author’s consent, Mr. Clément Payraudeau’s most comprehensive book dedicated to the study of the European Patent Convention and the case law of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office.

This book admittedly conveys the opinion of its author, who intends to submit it to every interested person’s comment and free criticism (cf. Introduction to the book, p. 3), but it is an opinion which is, to say the least, justified by the author’s important position within the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office, and particularly detailed considering the very large amount of decisions analysed.

Véron & Associés, which is 100% devoted to patent litigation, is pleased to contribute to make this invaluable source of information available to the intellectual property community and more particularly to every person interested in European patent law.