The most important point of the second day of the 124th Council meeting wasthe election of the new Chairman of the Administrative Council. Mr.Kongstad (DK) was the only candidate. Mr. Kongstad has in the pastexpressed himself strongly in favour of decentralisation. His view ofthe European Patent Network was one wherein the EPO would serve as a"back-office" to the national patent offices.

Otherwise the meeting was largely uneventful. Amongst the documents on theagenda were CA/84/10 ("Progress report on the trilateral and IP5")submitted by the President and CA/93/10 ("Work-sharing from anexaminer's perspective") submitted by the Central Staff Committee. Bothwere passed without a comment.

The day ended with the selection of a new VP1 and VP5 in closed session,i.e. without the usual observers from industry (BusinessEurope) and thepatent profession (epi), and without the Staff Committee or other Officestaff. At the time of writing the outcome was not yet known.

The first half day of the 124th meeting of the Administrative Council was relatively uneventful.

The outgoing President, Ms. Brimelow, presented the 2009 activities report(CA/44/10).The efforts made by the Office to limit expenses and increase productivity have paid off.This has led to a positive operational result under IFRS and to a decrease in unit costs.In contrast positive results from the SPP project (Single Patent Process)would have to wait for her successor. The Office presented for the first time a document(CA/79/10 rev.1) on current trends of activityin the national patent offices and the EPO.

The day ended with a discussion about the procedure for the upcoming selection of theChairman and Vice-Chairman of the Administrative Council, itself scheduled for tomorrow.Most delegations intervened in favour of more transparency.

The Administrative Council of the EPO will meet from 28 to 30 June in Munich.The agenda (CA/71/10) numbers about 60 pointsand a roughly equal number of supporting documents.The election of a new Chairman of the Administrative Council and the appointments ofnew Vice-Presidents for DG1 (search and examination) and for DG5 (legal matters) areamongst the more important internal matters to be dealt with. Topics of interest forthe external stakeholder include those concerned with fee reforms, and withco-operation at European and at global level.

The Staff Union of the EPO (SUEPO) has recently sent a letterto the Members of the European Parliament pleading for accessionof the European Union to the European Patent Organisation.

Bruno van Pottelsberghe has just published a policy brief entitled"Europe should stop taxing innovation".In this paper he argues the'enhanced' patent system proposed by the Competitiveness Council in December 2009 may actually weaken the patent system in Europe.

Richard Yung's views on the composition of the Administrative Council in the light of the recent Presidential election.

In December last year the EU Council has agreed on a number of conclusions on the main features of the Community Patent and the EU Patents Court. In the same month Jérôme Danguy and Bruno van Pottelsberghe published a working paper analysing the costs and benefits of the Community Patent. The main conclusion of the paper is that with a sensible level of fees the Community Patent should be beneficial for the business sector, the European Patent Office (EPO) and most of the National Patent Offices (NPOs), mainly due the abolition of translations and the avoidance of paralel litigations. Patent attorneys, lawyers specialised in patent litigation and translators would stand to lose part of their income, whereas both the EPO and the NPOs would risk to lose some of their power. According to the authors this provides an explanation for the observedresistance to the Community Patent.