TUESDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2009 | PALAIS DE LA BOURSE | BRUSSELS


11..00 – 11 .30 am
Registration and Café d’accueil

11.30 am – 13.00 pm
Keynote Address - Freeing Patents for Posterity
Alison Brimelow CBE President EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE Münich

Ms Alison Brimelow will answer your questions during an open debate with European professionals. Various topics will be tackled, out of which:

• How to describe the relationships between innovation, IP, and wealth creation ?
• Is IP really a remedy against crisis? if so, why? and how?
• How to treat the global "4.2 million unprocessed patent applications" problem. What would solutions to this bring to the economy?
• How far is Europe concerned? Are parts of the issue already addressed? What lies ahead?
• Sharing the Backlog, act 1: what are Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programmes for? What is the expected benefit?
• Trilateral pilot projects: what expectations for their implementation at the beginning of 2010 ?
• Sharing the Backlog, act 2: would the mutual exploitation of search and examination documents, and/or of patent data, be a major step?
• Global harmonization of patent-granting rules and criteria: dream or possible reality?
• Can translation be entirely automated? What are the other tracks in terms of workflow optimization?
• Does the impressive growth in China call for new co-operation agreements, notably between the EPO and the SIPO? Beyond the implication of EPO though the IPR-2 initiative, what could these cover?
• Financing the European Patent Office: what are the related challenges for member states and the industry?


with corporate view point of:

• Jan Muehlfeit Chairman Europe MICROSOFT CORPORATION Brussels

Moderated by James Nurton Managing Editor MANAGING IP London


You could send additional questions to ip@premiercercle.com James Nurton would be happy to collect them and propose them to Ms. Alison Brimelow or the others panellists.