AMBA speaks - with a brand new website

The IPKat likes websites, since he lives in one himself, and is always happy to welcome a new one.

Merpel was interested to hear of an organisation that is perhaps less well known in European patent circles.  AMBA is the Association of the Members of the Boards of Appeal, and is the organisation, independent of the European Patent Office itself, which represents - yes, you guessed it - members of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO.  It has just launched a sparkly new website here:

http://amba-epo.org/

Since the site is being built from scratch on zero budget, it is expected that there will be bugs and areas for improvement, and error reports and suggestions are solicited on the front page.  Merpel suggests that comments on the site would be better addressed to site's webmaster than to her.

As the website proclaims:

The purpose of the Association is to monitor issues of relevance for the judicial functions of the members of the boards of appeal, especially with a view to safeguarding their independence and promoting their self-government as members of a judiciary, and to gather its members for deliberations on questions of common interest, in order that they will be heard in bodies deciding or making proposals of relevance for these functions.

This website is designed to achieve those aims by:
Highlighting aspects of independence of the judiciary, and
Filling a gap in the information available about the Boards of Appeal.

The site has some useful and interesting links to Jurisprudence and Legal Texts relating to both the EPC and national law, although it appears that some of these link to documents only accessible to EPO insiders and are presumably aimed at members of the Boards themselves.

Of particular interest to those who have been following Merpel's posts about the issues currently facing the EPO, and in particular the independence of the Boards of Appeal (see Merpel's Open Letter here on the issues in general, and  here, here and here for the current proposals to change the administrative arrangements for the Boards of Appeal, embodied in a proposal from the President of the EPO to the Administrative Council (AC) in document CA/16/15) are the following:

• Publication of AMBA's comments on the proposal in CA/16/15, in a letter to the AC and President dated 19 March 2015).

• Comparison of independence indicators of the CA/16/15 proposal, the current situation, and the proposals, now apparently shelved since revision of the European Patent Convention itself would be required (see section (4) of this post), of the "Autonomy Project".  This part is interactive, and the reader can play with the parameters, and view them in greater or less detail.

Merpel welcomes that this contribution to the debate is openly available, and hopes that readers will find the website both informative and entertaining.

IMPORTANT UPDATE at 21:40 25 March 2015
P.S. Two kind commenters below have asked for sight of two further documents to assist with the understanding of the issues.  Merpel, ever attentive to the needs of her readers, has obtained the documents requested and posts links to them herewith.  They are:

• The letter to the Administrative Council from the Presidium of the Boards of Appeal, referred to in the AMBA letter of 19 March 2015, referred to above.
• The agenda of today's Administrative Council meeting.

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