The latest issue of IAM has now gone to press and will be published at the end of this week. There are a number of highlights, but for the cover story this time around I have gone for a piece written by Ciáran McGinley - the Controller of the EPO and so one of the office's most senior staff members - on the subject of "global patent warming". In the article, Ciáran goes into some detail about what the phrase means and what is causing it. "Incoming volumes are increasing per patent office due to globalisation driven by patent propensity and trade," he writes. "Pendency volumes are also increasing, pretty much independently of what has been happening to pendency times in the different offices. Finally, woolly boundaries are widespread, not just between granted patents but especially among pending applications. It is becoming too much, the system is gradually becoming much warmer. It may not be warm everywhere (yet). It may not be warm in all industrial sectors (yet). But it is definitely temperate."
I guess anyone daft enough to believe in "global warming" nonsense might also be alarmed at the patent system having problems.
