António Campinos Elected EPO President Starting Mid-2018

António Campinos of Portugal has been elected to serve as the next president of the European Patent Office (EPO). He will succeed Benoît Battistelli, who has served since 2010.

Campinos, who according to EPO is the first southern European to head the agency, will start his 5-year term on 1 July 2018. He is currently executive director of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which handles EU trademarks. He is a past president of the Portuguese Patent Institute (INPI), and at that time also was the Portuguese representative on the EPO Administrative Council for several years, according to an EPO press release today.

The election for president took place on 10 October in the Administrative Council, which is “made up of the delegations from all member states, is the Organisation’s legislative body. It is responsible for supervising the activities of the Office, approving the budget and appointing the President of the EPO,” the release said.

Battistelli had a somewhat rocky tenure, with patent filings rising significantly but staff relations persistently marked by conflict. He proclaimed in the release: “This decisive outcome shows how the European Patent Organisation has matured in terms of implementing strong governance and providing leadership in decision making that will serve European innovation.”

Campinos ran against one other candidate, Cuno Tarfusser, an Italian judge at the International Criminal Court, according to sources. Some watchdogs seeking change in the organisation have raised concern about a close relationship between Campinos and Battistelli.

Background information quoted from the EPO release:

About the European Patent Organisation

The European Patent Organisation is an intergovernmental organisation set up on the basis of the European Patent Convention (EPC), which was signed in Munich in 1973 and entered into force on 7 October 1977. The Organisation currently has 38 member states – all of the 28 EU members, plus Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey. Its task is to oversee the granting of European patents under the EPC by the European Patent Office.

About the European Patent Office

With nearly 7 000 staff, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna, the EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO’s centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 42 countries, covering a market of around 700 million people. The EPO is also the world’s leading authority in patent information and patent searching.

Image Credits: EUIPO