page_title: European Patent Organisation
section_title: Organs
hierarchical_section_title: European Patent Organisation / Organs
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Europäisches Patentamt in München
context_page_description: The European Patent Organisation is a public international organisation created in 1977 by its contracting states to grant patents in Europe under the European Patent Convention of 1973. The European Patent Organisation has its seat at Munich, Germany, and has administrative and financial autonomy.
  The European Patent Organisation is not legally bound to the European Union and has several members which are not themselves EU states.
  The evolution of the Organisation is inherently linked to the European Patent Convention. See European Patent Convention for the history of the European Patent system as set up by the European Patent Convention and operated by the European Patent Office.
context_section_description: The European Patent Organisation has two organs: the European Patent Office, which acts as its executive body, and the Administrative Council, which acts as its supervisory body as well as, to a limited extent, its legislative body. The actual legislative power to revise the European Patent Convention lies with the Contracting States themselves when meeting at a Conference of the Contracting States.
  Besides, the Boards of Appeal, which do not form an independent organ of the Organisation but are integrated within the European Patent Office, are assigned the role of an independent judiciary. The European Patent Organisation is in that sense an international organisation "modelled on a modern state order and based on the separation of powers principle".
caption: European Patent Office headquarters in Munich
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