This distance learning course is offered to patent examiners at national IP offices. Participants will learn to apply the criteria for Clarity as well as the methodology for determining the Unity of invention in line with the EPO practice (Guidelines and Case Law). 

Level of expertise: Intermediate level

This distance learning course is offered to patent examiners at national IP offices. Participants will learn to assess novelty and inventive step in line with the EPO practice (Guidelines and Case Law).

Level of expertise: Intermediate level

In this course you find recordings of two webinars on (1) the business use of patent information and (2) PATSTAT online.

This distance learning course is offered to patent examiners of national IP offices, in particular those in charge of drafting communications on the merits of a patent application with respect to patentability requirements. Participants will broaden their skills in preparing the written search opinion accompanying a search report according to EPO Guidelines. Training will consist of on-line modules and tests. Recorded sessions of virtual classrooms which took place during the course OD09-2017 further enhance the understanding of the topics.

Opening of course: 08.05.2017
Closure of course: 31.12.2017
Level of expertise: Intermediate

Find out more about this conference, where European and international user organisations, universities were discussing key substantive patent law harmonisation issues.

This distance learning course is offered to patent examiners at national IP offices who have started to use the EPOQUE Net tool. The course comprises on-line material, such as e-learning modules and will be articulated around a series of 6 virtual classroom (VC) sessions. The course has a focus on the hands-on experience, translated in the form of assignments, exercises and examples. The material will help EPOQUE Net users at national offices to efficiently perform searches using EPOQUE Net. The tutors are experienced EPO examiners.

During the VC sessions, participants have the possibility to communicate live with the experts and ask questions.

Registration form

Practice is the key to your preparations for Paper D of the EQE. From October to December 2017, D-type questions were sent on a daily basis to subscribers. You can still find the questions in a course room with the answers and a forum which was tutored until the end of December 2017. If you want to see them, enrol to the course.

"Boards of Appeal and key decisions" is an annual conference where experienced patent practitioners, judges and staff from national patent offices meet to discuss the most recent key decisions and developments in the EPO's boards of appeal case law.

The conference Examination Matters has become the meeting place for patent attorneys dealing with the EPO in the patent granting procedure. This course room offers access to the recordings of three public webinars covering some of the most popular topics of the event.

This self-paced course provides candidates with help and guidance on how to tackle EQE papers A, B, C and D. 

This self-paced course offers a basic introduction to the most important legal and procedural aspects of patents and the European patent system.

Pan-European Seal: this on-line course is mandatory for all candidates.

This series of five one-hour virtual classroom sessions will introduce the main concepts of IP strategy. All those involved in IP management in technology-driven SMEs need to be able to communicate with their company’s business, R&D and legal people. The IP strategy modules will introduce participants to essential management principles and how to apply them to the strategic management of IP assets. The focus is on value-based strategies for IP creation, and IP value extraction as an integral part of innovation strategy.

In diesem Kurs finden Sie die Videos einer Vortragsreihe für Formalsachbearbeiter, welche im Februar und März 2017 stattfand. Juristen und erfahrene Formalsachbearbeiter des EPA behandelten Verfahrensfragen, Beispiele und aktuelle Entwicklungen aus speziellen Bereichen der Formalsachbearbeitung.

Every patent application is assigned a category in one of the major patent classification schemes to ensure it can be found in subsequent searches by patent offices and other interested parties. Learn more about how this is done.

This course gives an insight into the specific patentability requirements and legal basis for particular topics such as biotechnology, computer-implemented inventions or patents based on traditional medicinal knowledge.

This second course of the CPC series gives you a short overview of the CPC and how it differs from the IPC. It also looks at some practical aspects and useful strategies. 

This course provides you with an overview and practical exercises about the problem-solution approach, which was developed to assess the inventiveness requirement of a European patent application.

This self-paced training course is all about understanding and interpreting the information contained in search reports and written opinions. The emphasis is on practical examples and exercises.

Pan-European Seal: this on-line course is mandatory for candidates in science and technology fields (DG1) and in international & legal affairs (DG5).

In this course, you will discover how to devise an effective search strategy, how to evaluate the prior art you find and how to know when to stop searching.find out about the role and importance of strategies in the search process.

This distance learning course comprises a series of five one-hour virtual classroom lessons which introduce topics from ip4inno training modules. These modules have been specifically designed to equip companies, business advisors, TTOs and others with an understanding of intellectual property issues as they impact SMEs and new businesses.

Use this on-line tool to learn how to use the IP Teaching Kit when preparing a lecture on IP.

This self-paced training course deals with the role of patents in innovation and research, the conditions an invention has to meet in order to become a patent and how to use patent documentation for a particular research project.

This course presents tools and databases available at the EPO that help you to prepare and file your patent application.

This course is available to the group of interviewers realising the EPO User Satisfaction Survey and provides an overview of the EPO and the granting procedure.

This distance learning course comprises a series of five one-hour virtual classroom lectures which introduce the main concepts of IP management. The sessions are particularly suitable for staff in small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) coming to IP management from a background in, for example, R&D, business development or general management.