Report of the Harmonisation Committee
J. Brown (GB), Chair
The inaugural meeting of the newly elected epi Harmonisation Committee was held by Zoom on Thursday, 19 November 2020.
All the newly elected members of the committee were present, namely Veronica Zemanova (CZ), Gabriele Leissler-Gerstl (DE), Ulrich Weingarten (DE), Luis-Alfonso Durán Moya (ES), Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (FI), John Brown (GB), Catherine Hanratty (IE), Dermot Roche (IE), Filippo Santi (IT) and Magdalena Krekora (PL). Also in attendance were Heike Vogelsang-Wenke (DE) (epi Vice President), Nicole van der Laan(epi Legal Adviser) and Sadia Liebig (epi Secretariat).
John Brown (GB) was re-elected as Chairman of the committee and Filippo Santi (IT) was re-elected as the Secretary. After all the attendees had introduced themselves,
Representation of epi at the meeting of the Standing Committee on the law of patents (“SCP”) at WIPO on 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th December 2020 was discussed. John Brown explained that, as far as we are concerned as an NGO, the SCP meeting would be a virtual one. The meetings of SCP are available on line via the WIPO website to anyone interested – registration is not necessary for this. epi can have two registered delegates to “attend” for each day. After discussion, it was agreed to ask Francis Leyder, epi President to nominate himself, John Brown, Guiseppe Colucci (member of the epi Litigation Committee), Luis Alfonso Duran Moya, Filippo Santi and Catherine as the epi delegates, with the intention that two delegates would “attend” each session (which days subject to the draft timetable of order of business which is not yet available).
There was a discussion of Substantive Patent Law Harmonisation (“SPLH”), many directed to the slides presented by Sylvie Strobel to the meeting held on 11th November 2020 of the EPO Committee on Patent Law and to the IT3 “Elements Paper” Proposal. It was difficult to have a meaningful discussion because the IT3 proposal is embargoed. As soon as the embargo is lifted, circulation to the committee will be arranged, followed fairly swiftly by the calling of a meeting of the committee.
