The EPO and its supportive role for innovation

The article outlines a policy initiative by the European Patent Office (EPO) to set up a European Patent Network to improve the support provided by the EPO, and by patent offices across Europe, for innovation. The policy has four key elements, defined as pillars:–Pillar one, utilisation and quality, relates to efforts to establish an accepted quality system and to enhance the opportunities for patent offices to make use of the search results of other offices.–Pillar two, user support, deals with ways of increasing local patent office support for users, eg by their provision of special searches.–Pillar three, partnership and cooperation, addresses the need – in the context of 31 states in the EPC, many languages, and some 320 PATLIB centres – for the EPO, national patent offices and the PATLIB centres to work together to improve innovation.–Pillar four, workload, looks at the worldwide context of patent search workloads.