The EPO has announced the winners of the European Inventor Award 2013, which honours outstanding inventors for their contribution to social, economic and technological progress.

Some 500 guests attended the award ceremony at the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam, including Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands, Sander Dekker, the Netherlands State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, and Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services.

The 2013 awards were presented in five categories, in addition to the Popular Prize:

Lifetime Achievement: Martin Schadt (Switzerland), inventor of the world’s first flat-panel liquid crystal display, better known as LCD.… [Continue reading]

The European Patent Office (EPO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have agreed to work closely together by facilitating the EPO use of IEC’s standardisation documents in all phases of its patenting process. The agreement sets another milestone for co-operation between the EPO and Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) to ensure greater legal certainty for patents granted by the EPO.

The agreement is based on the fact that IEC does not accept or allow the use of non-disclosure agreements in the standardisation work in which it is involved, alone or with other organisations, including informal discussions, input contributions and working documents. With this accord, EPO patent examiners will be able to full-text search IEC documents using the same process and tools as they use to search EPO’s own patent collections.… [Continue reading]

MultiLing’s key account client Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., recently announced record figures for net sales, for operating income, and for net income in fiscal 2012 (January to December 2012). The historic sales and earnings performance reflected strong growth in sales of tires to automakers in Japan, a business recovery in industrial products, success in securing market acceptance for price increases, a decline in raw material costs, continuing progress in reducing costs, and the weakening of the yen toward the end of the year.

Two thousand twelve was Yokohama’s first 12-month fiscal period since the company shifted to calendar-year accounting in 2011, from April-to-March accounting, so formal year-on-year comparisons are impossible.… [Continue reading]

Here is the next part of our series of case studies on how MultiLing helps multinational enterprises accomplish their global initiatives with the accurate, highly specialized, and secure translations of their intellectual property and/or technical materials.

Yokohama Rubber Improves Quality of its IP Translations, Lowers Risk and Costs with MultiLing

Best practices that have been conventional wisdom for decades can suddenly become antiquated and fall prey to new technology and better models. To stay productive and profitable, Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., a tire company based in Tokyo, Japan, consistently strives to stay aware of changes that can dramatically lower costs and increase eciency.… [Continue reading]

As anticipated, the joint EPO-USPTO Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system entered into force on 1 January 2013. It has already fully replaced the EPO’s “ECLA” classification scheme. CPC is now also the official classification scheme of the USPTO and will gradually replace the USPTO’s US Patent Classification (USPC) system over a transition period of two years. In its newest issue, “Patent Information News”, which is published by the European Patent Office, reports about the structure of the CPC.

Download Patent Information News Issue 1/2013… [Continue reading]

The new first-inventor-to-file (FITF) provisions of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) have taken effect on March 16, 2013. According to the USPTO’s announcement, the move to a FITF system is “one of the hallmarks of the AIA,” and constitutes “a major step towards harmonization of the U.S. patent system with those of the United States’ major trading partners, allowing greater consistency in the prosecution and enforcement of U.S. patents.”

The AIA guidelines authorise derivation proceedings before the USPTO, which will ensure that a person will not be able to obtain a patent for an invention that he or she did not actually invent, according to a USPTO press release.… [Continue reading]

The number of patent filings at the European Patent Office originating from the 38 EPO member states reached a new peak in 2012, beating the previous record set in 2008.

“The growth of filings from European businesses is a clear indication that industry here has opted to innovate its way out of the economic crisis”, EPO President Benoît Battistelli said, as he presented the EPO’s 2012 annual results in Brussels.

“The patent filings of today are shaping the innovations of tomorrow. These results confirm that Europe is not only a prime location for R&D activities but also valued as a stronghold of innovation by both technology generating and exporting companies.”

Last year, the EPO received a total of 257 744 patent filings from all over the world.… [Continue reading]

Last week, the EPO had the pleasure of hosting the 20th session of the PCT Meeting of International Authorities (MIA) in Munich. 2013 is a significant year, with the 35th anniversary of the first ever PCT filing and the 40th anniversary of the signing, in 1973, of the European Patent Convention. There have always been strong links between the two patent systems, which were negotiated and adopted in parallel. The PCT was even enshrined in the European Patent Convention.

The PCT, which today has 146 member states across the globe, continues to be praised by users as the best international platform for protecting patents.… [Continue reading]

The European Patent Office (EPO) welcomes the signing by EU ministers today in Brussels of an international agreement establishing a Unified Patent Court (UPC), which paves the way for the implementation of a unitary patent system in Europe. Signed by 24 EU member states today in the margins of their Competitiveness Council meeting, the agreement will enter into force once 13 countries have ratified it, including France, Germany and the UK.

“The signing of the UPC agreement is a decisive step towards the long-awaited introduction of a truly supranational patent system in Europe,” said EPO President Benoît Battistelli. “Following the endorsement of the unitary patent package by the European Parliament and Council in December 2012, the creation of a European court specialised in patent matters will be a tremendous boost for the completion of the European patent system.”

The Agreement on the Unified Patent Court will lead to the creation of a specialised patent court with a first and an appeal instance competent for litigation relating to patents granted by the EPO under the provisions of the European Patent Convention, e.g.… [Continue reading]

Further proof that MultiLing’s translators are among the best in the business! Mr. Kengo Date and Mrs. Mayu Kawaguchi, both from our office in Japan, recently passed the high-level patent translation test conducted each year by the Nippon Intellectual Property Translation Association (NIPTA). The Japanese authority in the field of patent translation offers the test in three levels of difficulty, with participants passing the most difficult 1st level listed on the NIPTA website as “professional translators recommended by the association.”

Kengo Date took 1st level test along with 47 other participants – and he fully passed the 1st level. Only he reached this level of excellence this year in the field of mechanical engineering among them.… [Continue reading]