European Patent Office - Function, Status and Location

Function, Status and Location

The European Patent Office (EPO) grants European patents for the Contracting States to the European Patent Convention. The EPO provides a single patent grant procedure, but not a single patent from the point of view of enforcement. Hence the patents granted are not European Union patents or even Europe-wide patents, but a bundle of national patents. Besides granting European patents, the EPO is also in charge of establishing search reports for national patent applications on behalf of the patent offices of Belgium, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, and Turkey.

The European Patent Office is not a legal entity as such, but an organ of the European Patent Organisation, which has a legal personality.

The EPO headquarters are located at Munich, Germany. The European Patent Office also includes a branch in Rijswijk (a suburb of The Hague, Netherlands), sub-offices in Berlin, Germany, and Vienna, Austria and a "liaison bureau" in Brussels, Belgium. At the end of 2009, the European Patent Office had a staff of 6818 (with 3718 based in Munich, 2710 in Rijswijk, 274 in Berlin, 112 in Vienna and 4 in Brussels). The predecessor of the European Patent Office was the Institut International des Brevets or IIB.

The premises of the European Patent Office enjoy a form of extraterritoriality. In accordance with the Protocol on Privileges and Immunities, which forms an integral part of the European Patent Convention under Article 164(1) EPC, the premises of the European Patent Organisation, and therefore those of the European Patent Office, are inviolable. The authorities of the States in which the Organisation has its premises are not authorized to enter those premises, except with the consent of the President of the European Patent Office. Such consent is however "assumed in case of fire or other disaster requiring prompt protective action".