Patent quality at the European Patent Office

Low-quality patents have become a concern for many jurisdictions including the USA and Europe. The legal discussions about patent quality usually consider either changes in law, both, substantive and procedural; and making administrative policies to ensure quality patents in a system. Though, defining patent quality is no easy task. Multiple factors, including stakeholders’ interest, technology type, and purpose of the study may influence how patent quality is defined. Nonetheless, patent offices around the world, including the European Patent Office (EPO) have taken many initiatives, both, legal and administrative to ensure quality of patents. Not much of the previous work has been dedicated to acknowledge and discuss these already existing measures at the patent offices. However, it is important to acknowledge that the aforementioned measures could be an interesting starting point for future research to explore if these measures work and if any further improvement, either procedural or administrative, should be made in the existing quality mechanisms. This article explores the existing principles of quality embedded in the legal and administrative conduct at the EPO. In order to understand what needs to be changed, one must understand what is already available.