Spotlight on Life Sciences Oppositions

Having advised thousands of clients on their EPO opposition strategies for many years, Mewburn Ellis is acutely aware that successful oppositions and appeals require not only deep technical expertise and knowledge of the subject matter under scrutiny, but a forensic understanding of the evolving procedural aspects of the EPO process and timeline. Mewburn Ellis has produced a new special report focussing on oppositions in the life sciences sector to provide our clients with forensic insight into the EPO opposition process.

Our research comes at an important juncture. The procedural changes introduced by the EPO in 2016 to streamline the opposition process have begun to take effect, producing tightened timeframes that, while welcome, require new strategies to navigate successfully.

We published this report to help tackle the key questions our clients ask regularly. In spring 2019, we undertook 350 hours of research, analysing more than 5,000 opposition cases filed at the European Patent Office over the last ten years, studying the timelines for hundreds of oppositions both before and after the EPO’s opposition streamlining initiative. Our own proprietary data analysis tool, developed specifically for this research programme, enabled us to download and manipulate significant quantities of data, a task previously unmanageable when undertaken manually.

In seeking to tackle the EPO opposition process our clients regularly face a number of key questions which our report answers:

Which technical areas are the most contested and attract the most oppositions?
Is the EPO’s streamlining initiative working and are they on track to meet their target?
How is the opposition timeline changing?
Are extensions of time for response to an opposition harder to secure?
How are multi-party oppositions changing?
Which patents and companies attract the most oppositions?
Which opponents are most active?

Key Points of Note:

The EPO’s streamlining initiative has compressed all stages of the opposition procedure. Patentees must be ready to move quickly.
Our analysis shows not only that the EPO’s behavior has changed following the streamlining initiative, but that patent proprietors’ behavior has changed also.
The EPO’s streamlining initiative is working. Patentees need to take early, preemptive action.