Leader in Patent Quality: EPO

The European Patent Office (EPO) ranks first for patent quality among the world’s five largest patent offices including USPTO and JPO, over the years EPO has earned this position and has shown considerable improvement year over year. This survey of corporate and private practice IP professionals was conducted jointly by Thomson Reuters and Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) magazine.

As per the survey, 74% of in-house counsels revealed that the quality of patents granted by the EPO is “excellent or very good” (as compared to 71% in the last year), with 62% of the private practice attorneys sharing the same view (as compared to 56% in the last year). The Japan Patent Office ranked second with 57% and 43% respectively, followed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (50% and 37%), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (34% and 24%) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (23% and 13%).

This survey reveals that the quality of patents granted by the EPO has improved from previous years: 22% of the in-house attorneys from companies and 26% of their counterparts in private practice agreed with this view, while roughly two thirds of the respondents thought that it had stayed the same, and 7% and 9% respectively answered that the quality had deteriorated.

EPO President Benoît Battistelli said that “The results of this survey are a renewed confirmation of the EPO’s efforts to strengthen the quality of European patents for the benefit of society and the economy”.