The Staff Union of the European Patent Office (SUEPO) has called for a strike of all European Patent Office staff, many of whom will be traveling to Brussels to take part in a demonstration against the undermining of the European patent organization by its governing body and management.  Perhaps this should be filed under the heading “Believe it or Not,” but it is indeed true.  The European Union takes patents very seriously, and while in the past I have poked fun at the fact that patent issues stir such emotion perhaps we over here in the US should be paying more attention and take a page out of the European playbook.

In an interesting article, Heise Online reports that SUEPO believes the supervisors of the EPO are not interested in high-quality legal protection of commercial rights that would actually strengthen European industry, science and innovation.  The staff of the EPO apparently does not trust upper level management and morale throughout the EPO is extremely low, and in the past has even protested to try and get more time for examiners to do their jobs.

The problems identified by SUEPO regarding the EPO sound eerily similar to problems that are plaguing the US Patent Office.  For example, the Government Accounting Office called out the US Patent Office in a report issued in September 2007, taking the PTO to task for their inability to retain examiners and unrealistic production goals.  Furthermore, morale at the USPTO is exceptionally low; so low that certain examining groups have simply decided to refuse to issue any patents any more.  And the qualifications of upper level USPTO management has been questioned because the political appointees running the Patent & Trademark Office have absolutely no experience in the patent industry and simply do not understand what is required to draft, file and prosecute a patent application.

The problems facing the patent systems of the world are staggering, and real political leadership is going to be necessary to solve this problem.  Of course, calling it a problem is really misleading.  The so-called problem is one of great success.  Because innovation is more and more becoming the driving force of the world economy patent offices around the globe are experiencing tremendous growth in the number of patent applications, and as innovation marches forward the technology represented in these applications is becoming more and more complex.  Unfortunately, rather than giving examiners time to really examine applications they are given arbitrary amounts of time per application.

As reported by the BBC, Alison Brimelow, the head of the European Patent Office, says that delays in Europe of up to 10 years have left somewhere between five and ten million inventions queuing for approval!  And I thought that the backlog of about one million applications at the USPTO was ridiculous.  No wonder SUEPO is protesting!

I really don’t know anything about SUEPO.  For all I know they are an organization that I wouldn’t agree with about anything normally, but I have to say that I admire that they are standing up to take some action to highlight the problems of the EPO.  I wish some of the career US Patent Office employees would stand up and say enough is enough, but if US patent attorneys are afraid of speaking out for fear of retribution then I can’t really blame career USPTO officials from saying something that may cost them their jobs.  But maybe some of those who have left the Office and gone into private practice, or those who have retired, can stand up and draw some attention to the USPTO crisis.  Something needs to be done and soon!