[Patents] 400 EPO job openings

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

The EPO is looking for 400 new examiners.

        http://www.european-patent-office.org/epo/patexam.htm

They do not mention the field of programming / informatics / computer
science but neighboring fields such as telecommunication and electronics.

In German law there has been a provision that informaticians may not be
hired as examiners by the patent office because their field is not
statutory.  As the EPO is formally even now limiting itself to "technical
programmes", it is consistent that they are not looking directly for
informaticians but rather for technicians who use programming as a tool.

Currently the EPO is rewriting its 1985 examination guidelines, and of
course they would like the result to be legalised by a directive from
Brussels.  It seems likely that both the examination guidelines and any
directive will be vague, pretending to confirm some kind of restriction to
technical character but in a way that makes it easy for lawyers to patent
anything they like, unless the EPO get such a lot of pressure that from
time to time they change the policy.  They call that "dynamic technicity
concept", see http://swpat.ffii.org/stidi/

--
Hartmut Pilch                                           http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation        http://swpat.ffii.org/
79700 signatures against software patents         http://www.noepatents.org/