EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE is recruiting a Director | Directorate Appeals Committee Secretariat.
With almost 7 000 employees, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Its headquarters are in Munich and it also has offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna. The EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO’s centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 44 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world’s leading authority in patent information and patent searching.
In 2017, the EPO received over 165 000 patent applications and granted over 105 000 patents. Its free online patent database, Espacenet, contains more than 100 million technical documents from 100 countries, and its free neural machine translation service, Patent Translate, provides instant, high-quality translation in 32 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.
The Appeals Committee (ApC) is an advisory administrative body which provides for a peer review of disputed decisions as part of the EPO’s formal dispute settlement procedures by delivering reasoned opinions on individual decisions or acts adversely affecting staff.
The chair, vice-chair and members of the ApC act independently and impartially in the performance of their duties.
The role of the Directorate Appeals Committee Secretariat is to support the functioning of the ApC. Its director acts as an interface between the chair of the ApC and the Appeals Committee Secretariat. The Secretariat is composed of lawyers and administrative employees and is based in Munich.
To ensure the efficient operation of the directorate, and in view of the concerted effort being made to ensure the punctual processing of pending appeals, the Secretariat is looking for an experienced director on a temporary basis for a period of three years.
YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES
– meeting expectations regarding the punctual processing of pending appeals;
– supervising the registration of incoming internal appeals, structuring/clustering new appeals;
– managing the staff of the Appeals Committee Secretariat (lawyers and assistants);
– developing the Secretariat’s internal procedures and new workflows for mastering the workload (further development of (electronic) working tools);
– acting as line manager and ensuring the performance of the team (timeliness, quality);
– managing resources and ensuring the proper workload balance and performance of the Secretariat;
– advising on legal formalities arising with internal appeals;
– updating and maintaining the database of ApC opinions;
– managing the interface between the different stakeholders: (i) chair and vice-chair, (ii) Secretariat and (iii) parties;
– undertaking duty travel as required by business needs.
YOUR QUALIFICATIONS
– diploma of completed university studies at master’s level or – in exceptional cases – equivalent professional experience;
– excellent knowledge of one official language and ability to understand the other two; in exceptional cases, excellent knowledge of one official language and ability to understand another;
– citizenship of one of the member states of the European Patent Organisation.
TIMEFRAME
It is intended to hold the interviews in week 46, in Munich.
Job group: 3
Grade: G13/3 (net (basic) monthly salary* for this vacancy: EUR 12.074,72
Duration of appointment: 3 years
Career path: Managerial
Location: Munich
Application deadline: 26.10.2018
* after deduction of EPO internal tax and before deduction of staff contributions to the social-security and pension schemes.
To foster gender diversity, EPO encourages applications from female candidates.
The EPO is an equal opportunities employer and supports workforce diversity as a signatory to the Diversity Charter (Charta der Vielfalt) since 2010.
All applications for vacant positions will be welcomed and considered on the professional merits of the applicant against the role profile for the position regardless of nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, parental responsibilities, age, religion or belief.
For the online application please click here.
