Hartmut Pilch comments on one of these EUX.TV feature reports where Communications director Oswald Schroder from the European Patent Office tells his story:
The EPO mass-produces broad and trivial patents on unpatentable subject matters in order to finance itself, without much regard to competitiveness of European industries. The existing unitary system has already gone out of control, and the post-grant unitary system under discussion now would make the system even more self-referential and unreformable East-Asians are already among the big customers of the EPO and as their share increases the protectionist effect of the system decreases.
What he says is sometimes raised by the economists but the EPO seems to be sustainable as a business model. What EUX.TV got completely wrong is the title. The EPO is no EU-institution and many challenges arise from this institutional mismatch.
Sköne Oke 
[…] In the legal world, it’s been a very active week, with the Court of Justice killing the idea that there might be a separate patent court (from BLOG@IPJUR and Verfassungsblog), while the European Patent Office has come in for some criticism. […]
[…] Hartmut Pilch : criticism of the EPO (March 2011) […]