Charter

Patent quality is a concept used by many different stakeholders, but not easily defined. There are a variety of different perspectives:

  • Patent offices often think of patent quality in terms of streamlined and timely patent search and examination procedures.
  • Companies have their own, often different, understanding of patent quality focusing on fitness for purpose to support targeted IP strategies.
  • Users of IP may understand patent quality as the set of positive economic outcomes produced by the patent system.

The granting of patents with a high chance of validity is crucial to consistent, predictable and efficient court decisions in patent lawsuits, and the good functioning of the patent system in general. The outcome of the patenting process, from proper drafting by the applicant to thorough examination by the patent offices, including the European Patent Office, should be patents with reliable validity. If this is lacking, there are serious consequences. For instance, the bifurcated German patent court system creates the so called “injunction gap”, caused by slow decisions on validity by the BPatG on the one hand and the relative speed of infringement decisions by Civil Courts on the other. This gap creates considerable uncertainty for industry and skewed outcomes, as well as criticism among users and observers of the patent system. This uncertainty would be reduced significantly if patents could be more reliably considered prima facie valid from grant.

However, the burden to improve the situation is not only on the authorities’ side e.g., by improving the examination and litigation processes and providing the necessary resources for the courts. The users of the system must also contribute to the efficiency and the transparency of the patent system by focusing their IP generation and portfolio management on patent quality rather than quantity.

We, the undersigned companies therefore voluntarily adhere to the following Industry Patent Quality Charter and declare that:

  • Patent quality is a crucial element of the health of the IP system. High numbers of patents are neither cost effective nor a primary goal.
  • We focus our patent filings on inventions that add sustained value to improve our company’s and our customer’s products and services.
  • A high rank in the patent application filing statistics of the patent offices is not our priority.
  • We regularly review our patent portfolios and adapt the number of existing patents to that needed to support our businesses, thus freeing up space for others in the IP system.
  • We ensure proper information for the public by striving for clearly written patents with a well-defined scope of protection, avoiding misleading or inconsistent wording.

Signatories

Amaury Claudel

Chief Patent Counsel

ATOS

Jörg Thomaier

Head of IP Bayer Group

Bayer AG

Stephan Altmeyer

VP Patent & Brand

Deutsche Telekom AG

Gerhard Guthöhrlein

Head of Intellectual Property Europe

Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA

Christina Schäfer

Head of Patent Strategy & Management

dSPACE GmbH

Gabriele Mohsler

VP Patent Development

Ericsson

Andreas Poredda

Chief Patent Officer

F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Thomas Spernat

Head of IP

Heraeus Business Solutions GmbH

Richard Lloyd

Patent Development Director - Global Legal Affairs

HP Inc.

Matthias Burkhardt

Senior Patent Counsel | Intellectual Property

Inventronics GmbH

Gianluca Previti

Head of Intellectual Property

Iveco Group N.V.

Christian Hamann

Vice President Corporate IP

Knorr-Bremse AG

Fabien Müller

Deputy HO Intellectual Property

Lilium GmbH

Christian Grünberger

Director Intellectual Property

MTU Aero Engines AG

Tuomas Saukkonen

Head of Cellular Standards Portfolio

Nokia Technologies Oy

Frank Oster

Director Intellectual Property - Global

Physik Instrumente (PI)

Veronique Kremer

Senior Director and Associate General Counsel, Europe & AMA

Procter & Gamble Company

Fabian Gonell

SVP, Licensing Strategy

Qualcomm Qualcomm Inc. GmbH & Co. KG

Andreas Hoferer

Vice President Intellectual Property

Schaeffler Automotive Buehl GmbH & Co. KG

Beat Weibel

Chief IP Counsel

Siemens AG

Markus Simon

Head of Intellectual Property

Siemens Healthcare Innovation GmbH&Co.KG

Filip De Corte

Head of IP

Syngenta Crop Protection AG

Tim Bast

Vice President Legal Affairs, Intellectual Property Rights

Tetra Pak Group

Jochen Meyer

Vodafone GmbH

Linus Eklund

Vice President Patents

Volvo Group

You want to become a signatory of the IPQC or you are interested in more information? We are looking forward to your message. Please use the contact form.