EPO publishes Quality Report 2017

19 June 2018

The EPO has
today published the second edition of its dedicated Quality Report. Compared
with the 2016 edition, the report provides more extensive information and
details on existing and new measures to deliver high-quality
products and services.

“Quality
is our number one priority and in 2017 we continued to adapt to make changes and
intensify efforts to maintain our advantage in this area,” said EPO President
Benoît Battistelli. “This report allows us to give our users a full
understanding of the actions we’re undertaking to provide the highest quality patents.”

Last year,
the EPO set a precedent by publishing its first Quality Report covering 2016. The
user community and other stakeholders welcomed this initiative to increase
transparency. The 2017 report provides the latest detailed information on the
EPO’s quality management system and the various initiatives the Office has taken
to improve quality in the course of the last year, including:

• IS0 9001 re-certification – In December 2017 the EPO obtained ISO
  9001 re-certification for its Quality Management System for the entire patent
  process, which was achieved with no instances of non-conformity.
• Quality and internal re-organisation – The 2017 edition explains how a
  recent internal re-organisation of the Office is contributing to increasing
  quality and efficiency. Under the new structure, patent examiners and
  formalities officers work side-by-side in the same units, thereby reducing inter-departmental
  handover points and enhancing opportunities for quality improvements. New
  opposition and central formalities directorates were created, composed of 500
  specially selected examiners and dedicated formalities officers. This means
  that opposition expertise will be concentrated and, as a result, quality and
  harmonisation will be improved.
• Improved timeliness – Timeliness is an integral part of the EPO’s quality
  policy. In 2017, the Office achieved substantial reductions in the time needed
  to complete search, examination and opposition procedures. For example in the
  area of search, the EPO has already managed to reach (and even surpass) its
  goal of establishing a comprehensive search and written opinion within six
  months from filing of the application
  with the EPO.
• The role of Asian prior art – The growing use of Asian prior art
  by EPO patent examiners is also highlighted in the report. This is the result
  of ongoing measures undertaken such as the use by examiners of Patent
  Translate, training efforts, increased use of the Cooperative Patent Classification
  globally and improved tools.
• Expanded documentation – The EPO’s efforts to set up a
  comprehensive, complete documentation collection have resulted in over one
  billion technical records and 50 million Asian-origin patent documents, thereby
  guaranteeing high-quality searches. For example, the EPO has been very active
  in recent years in obtaining standards-related documentation, and we now have over
  three million standards records in our data collection. These are accessed by
  our examiners to provide high-quality search reports from which applicants and
  the general public can benefit.
• Extended user dialogue – The Quality
  Report concludes with a focus on our
  intensive dialogue with users and stakeholders, underlining that their feedback
  forms an integral part of the EPO’s quality management system. Our annual user satisfaction surveys also now involve
  some 5 000 interviews with our users. For instance, the most recent
  survey results show that between 2015 and 2017, levels of user satisfaction
  with patent administration services increased from 80% to 89%.

Further information