CET // CET hits full stride in second quarter

The Atlanta meeting kicked off a very busy quarter for FICPI’s largest group, the Work and Study Committee, otherwise known as CET.

As President of CET, I am pleased to share with you the highlights of our committee’s work over the past three months, in my latest quarterly update for FICPI’s global community of IP attorneys.

On behalf of FICPI, CET completed several submissions, including to the:

• European Patent Office (EPO) on Examination Guidelines
• US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) on Artificial Intelligence and Inventorship.
• European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) on its annual mapping exercise in support of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

All these submissions will be shared with membership on ficpi.org once the FICPI Executive Committee (ExCo) has issued its formal approval.

In addition to our own Atlanta meeting, CET members represented FICPI at other important gatherings, notably:

·      Three separate groups of the Standing Advisory Committee before the EPO (SACEPO), each of which met online during May:

• Guidelines, attend for FICPI by Jordi Knox, on May 4^th.
• Quality, attended by several FICPI members, on May 11^th.
• Rules, attended by Antonio Pizzoli, on May 16^th.

Later in the month, on June 22^nd, also online, the SACEPO main meeting was attended by Antonio and myself.

• On June 1st, Eleni Kokkini, Elia Sugrañes and Elena Miller represented FICPI at the 1^st online session of the 2023 meeting of the Stakeholder Quality Assurance Panels (SQAP) Audit on Opposition Decisions – and also joined sessions 2&3 on June 14^th and 15^th.
• FICPI was represented at two meetings of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO):
• Rowan Joseph joined the 47^th Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) in Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge, and Folklore online starting on June 9^th.
• Brett Slaney and Vikrant Rana attended WIPO’s online Application Programming Interface (API) Day on June 13^th.
   

EUIPO hosted several meetings during the past quarter at which FICPI was represented:

• The International IP Enforcement Summit was held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on June 15^th, attended by Elena Miller.
• Together with Jürgen Buchhold, Elena also joined the 1^st BoA User Focus Group Meeting in Alicante, Spain, on June 16^th.
• Eleni Kokkini represented FICPI during the online Knowledge Exchange with Users on CP5 on June 21^st and the CP4 discussion the following day.
• Michael Conway joined the online seminar, ‘Designs: The Future is Now’, on June 29^th.

As I write this article, I am preparing for a two-day visit to the WIPO General Assembly, which takes place between July 6^th and 14^th 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland accompanied by the CET’s Reporter General, Kim Finnilä.  

In Geneva, FICPI is presenting our work on Substantive Patent Law Harmonization (SPLH) to the Group B+ Plenary session, as well as attending other side meetings. You can learn a lot more about FICPI’s views on SPLH, including several informative videos, at https://ficpi.org/library/ficpi-viewpoints/splh.

Further out, we are already busy preparing for the London ExCo, which takes place between 2^nd and 4^th October, ahead of the Open Forum (https://ficpi.org/ficpi-21st-open-forum).  You can find out about these preparations in FICPI News.

If you would like to get involved in the work of FICPI’s Study and Work committee or have any questions about any topics covered in this quarterly update, please contact me at [email protected].

Click here to read the previous quarterly report.