Meeting with the President of ACPI - 16th March 2016

The meeting between epi, EPO and the President of the ACPI (Colombian Association of Intellectual Property) was organized by the EPO in the framework of the cooperation between Europe and Colombia as a follow-up to the recent signature of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) agreement in January 2016 in Bogotá.

ACPI is composed of about 200 lawyers in IP and patent law, engineers and clients. ACPI was represented at the meeting by Mr Juan Carlos Cuesta Quintero, Legal Director of Cuesta & Asociados LTDA in Bogotá, and since 10 years President of ACPI (Colombian Association of Intellectual Property). He was accompanied by Ms Diana Romero, his wife, lawyer, member of ACPI and head of the IP department at Cuesta & Associados Ltda. The EPO was represented by Mr Alberto Casado Cerviño, Vice-President Directorate-General Operational Support and Ms Ingrid Cailhol, Administrator International Cooperation. From epi side were present Mr Tony Tangena, epi President, Mr Leyder (chair of the epi European Patent Practice Committee), Ms Amparo Campos Coll, Legal Advisor, and Ms Amélie Faivre, meeting coordinator from the epi Secretariat.

The President of the ACPI gave a brief presentation on ACPI, IP and patents in Colombia. He described the patent system in Colombia as very effective but not used as much as hoped by the profession. He highlighted the demographic and economic importance of Colombia in Latin America as a hub to neighbouring countries. Colombia also has key industries (pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, mining, chemicals, electronics, telecommunications, construction). « National patent applications in Colombia keep growing and the ACPI endeavours to boost the number of patent applications. » said Mr Cuesta.

Mr Leyder (chair of the epi European Patent Practice Committee) explained to the guests the situation of the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court.

Mr Alberto Casado Cerviño stressed the importance of SMEs. He stated that 32 per cent of all patent applications at the EPO are filed by SMEs. Mr Cuesta indicated that attention has to be paid to all sizes of companies, certainly to SMEs, but also to big businesses.

Our President Mr. Tangena explained the role of epi and stated that epi is taking an active part in spreading information about the European patent system. epi fosters a world-scale cooperation with our sister organisations in South America, but also as shown recently with others from the USA and Japan, in order to get a harmonized patent system that serves the interests of our clients and society best.

All presentations shown during this meeting are available for epi members after login. Please follow this link:
http://patentepi.org/en/epi/forum/threads/53