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ITU and European Patent Office agree to share information
Patent agreement will smooth new tech adoption
globally
Geneva,
6 May
2011
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ITU and the EPO (European Patent Office) have signed an agreement in recognition
of the need for standards makers to share information to help improve the
quality of patents.
Standards are essential for the wide adoption of new
technologies in the marketplace. However, there is potential for conflict
between patents and standards when the implementation of the standard requires
the use of technology protected by one or more patents.
The newly signed agreement will help create the right
balance between the interests of all relevant stakeholders, including patent
holders, implementers of the standards, and end-users while seeking to enable
solutions to market-driven needs on a global basis.
“ITU has long championed an intellectual property
policy that takes into account the needs of patent holders as well as a
requirement to meet the needs of end users in the most efficient manner,” ITU
Secretary General Hamadoun Touré said, “This agreement will provide the
necessary framework to better respond to the challenges created by the interplay
between patents and standards and will increase the transparency of patent
information declared to ITU.”
Mr Benoît Battistelli, President of the European Patent
Office, said, “This agreement is in recognition of the importance for
standard-setting organizations to cooperate with patent and trademark offices
with a view to improving transparency at the interplay of both systems and
facilitating the work of patent examiners in their examination processes.”
The agreement will allow ITU to link its Patent
Database to the EPO Database containing patent documentation relevant to ITU’s
standardization activities. The organization of joint workshops on the interplay
between Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and standards is also foreseen.
In order to minimize this risk of conflict and to
assure smooth and wide dissemination of standardized technology, ITU, together
with World Standards Cooperation (WSC) partners
ISO and IEC, established a joint patent policy in 2007. The common policy
provides reassurance to industry that its interests are protected when sharing
intellectual property with implementers of standards. It also ensures that
patents embodied into ITU standards are accessible to everyone without undue
constraints. For the EPO, the agreement will improve access to documentation
from ITU allowing the EPO to further improve patent quality and legal certainty.
For more information, please contact:
Sanjay Acharya
Chief Media Relations and Public Information
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Toby Johnson
Senior Communications Officer
Telecommunication Standardization Bureau,
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Rainer Osterwalder
Director Media Relations, EPO
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