IPKAT BOOK REVIEW: SINGER AND STAUDER’S “THE EUROPEAN PATENT CONVENTION”

This, the third edition of Margarete Singer and Dieter Stauder’s The European Patent Convention: a Commentary, was published in two volumes last year. Volume 1 (£130) provides an analytical and well-sourced account of the Convention from the Preamble to Article 89 (together with the relevant Implementing Regulations, Protocols and Rules), while Volume 2 (£135) continues in the same vein from Article 90 through to Article 178. Although its editors dismissively describe it as a “short commentary” which is “above all a commentary for practitioners”, it is neither short, weighing in at over 1,600 pages, nor is it exclusively practice-oriented, since it is enriched by insights which go well beyond the niceties of practice, extending to the very principles of patent protection.

The task of preparing a work of this nature is a daunting one, since it is not merely a monumental legal work but a massive translation, this third edition being the English version of the German second edition. Although that edition appeared as long ago as 2000, the English translation has been updated and includes discussion of EPC 2000.

The IPKat particularly recommends the coverage of Articles 52 to 57 on patentability and patentable subject-matter. This is the real core of patent law and a vast corpus of text has been allowed to grow around these provisions. Singer and Stauder’s book succeeds in explaining the import of these Articles by concentrating firmly on the essentials, summarising the main principles of patentability without sacrificing detail in the form of reference to the relevant Board and Court decisions where helpful.

Allegedly greatest inventions here , here and here