As a reminder, CET is the abbreviation of the French language name of FICPI’s Study & Work Committee, which is responsible for organising and managing FICPI’s work on substantive IP issues.
This includes the study of administrative or legislative reforms and improvements to international treaties and conventions.
Our goal is to facilitate the exercise by inventors and businesses of their rights, of increasing their security, and of simplifying procedure or formalities.
CET therefore looks to keep itself informed of proposals for amendment of IP treaties, laws and regulations and of significant court cases.
We also keep an eye open for any practical difficulties faced by IP attorneys or their clients in dealing with IP Offices.
This has been a busy year in pursuit of those goals, and we have many more plans for the remainder of 2024.
FICPI Madrid Open Forum
For those of you attending the Open Forum in Madrid next month (25th – 28th September) each of our seven sub-groups will have their own gatherings at 3.45 pm on Friday – these gatherings are open to anyone attending the Open Forum, and are a good way to get involved as well as meeting attendees with a similar interest. Before the Open Forum, the leadership of the CET will meet for a day to plan our upcoming activities.
FICPI ExCo
Earlier this year, in March, FICPI’s executive body, known as ExCo, passed five resolutions submitted by CET at its meeting in Goa, India. These resolutions form the basis of lobbying efforts. They covered a variety of topics including our initial views on full-text (i.e. DOCX) patent applications, the handling of UPC-SPCs and procedural rules for ex-officio objections in Contentious Proceedings.
The five resolutions can be found on the FICPI website here: https://ficpi.org/events/event/executive-committee-meeting-goa-2024.
WIPO Diplomatic Meetings
In late May, the Chair of our Pharmaceutical and Biotech group, Rowan Joseph from South Africa, represented FICPI at a WIPO Diplomatic Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, focused on genetic resource declarations in patent applications.
Would you believe that negotiations on this issue began as far back as 2001!
Now the discussions have produced a treaty that FICPI feels it can support – WIPO’s report on the meeting and the resulting treaty can be found here: https://www.wipo.int/pressroom/en/articles/2024/article_0007.html.
There is a second WIPO diplomatic conference planned for November in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, focused on the proposed design law treaty to harmonise the formalities of design filing, at which FICPI will be represented by the Chair of our Design group, Jürgen Buchhold from Germany.
SPLH Colloquium
In June 2024, in Munich, Germany, we joined our friends from AIPPI and AIPLA to co-host a Colloquium to support the continued global efforts on Substantive Patent Law Harmonisation (SPLH), including the difficult issue of a grace period. The meeting was highly successful and very constructive with 50 attendees, including representatives from seven major patent offices and eight user organisations. We will share the final statement once it is agreed.
Client-Patent Attorney Privilege
Our Reporter General, Kim Finnilä attended the Group B+ meeting in July, where this matter was discussed. IP Australia is taking the leadership on this important topic and will be reviewing responses to the consultation on the Draft Agreement carried out in 2022. We will continue to push for action.
Summary
As you can see, it has been a busy and productive year with more to come.
I very much look forward to meeting in person those of you who can attend the Open Forum in Madrid next month.
For anyone who cannot attend, but has an interest in getting involved in CET, please contact me at any time.