Comparison with EU patent system

There are many patent offices outside of the US, including the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), and the Eurasian Patent Office. The first two collaborate with the USPTO as the Trilateral Patent Offices.

I was curious about the European Patent Office (EPO) because it represents nearly 40 European nations that are parties to the European Patent Convention (EPC). Surprisingly, despite the existence of the European Union, the patent system is decentralized.. As I understand it, although the European Patent Office grants patents centrally, the patent grants are individually enforceable and revocable in each country. Patent litigation is handled separately in each country and patents can be invalidated in a single country. The patent granted by the European Patent Office becomes essentially "a bundle of national patents". There is a proposal to create a unitary (more centralized) patent system for the European Union.

Nevertheless, there are many consistencies between these patent legal systems, and differences with the US.

Until the American Invents Act came into effect, US patents were granted to those "first-to-invent", while European patents were granted to those "first-to-file". In other words, the EPO granted the patent to the applicant with the earlier filing date, while the US granted the patent to the applicant with earlier evidence of invention. Today, as a result of patent reform, the US is also "first-to-file".

In Europe, inventions which have become publicly available are not patentable. In the US, inventors have a one-year grace period after publishing to apply for a patent grant. Many US inventors still avoid using this grace period so that they can apply for patents outside the US.

To my knowledge, other differences are based on different interpretations. The EPO applies stricter interpretation and scrutiny, in general. For example, the EPC explicitly requires that an invention's improvement not only be novel and useful, but contain an "inventive step". Likewise, many software patents which are allowed in the US are rejected in Europe.