One aspect of IP finance that this weblog rarely considers is the cost of system maintenance. In this regard, the European Commission's Official Journal website has just furnished us with some interesting data. Today it features the Statement of revenue and expenditure of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) for the financial year 2009 — Amending Budget No 1 (2009/690/EC). The books balance perfectly, of course: revenue and expenditure are both set to stand at 13.239 million euros, most of the revenue (11.469 million euro) being expected to come from fees.The CPVO presumably keeps its expenses down by operating in four of the EU's official languages: English, French, German and Dutch (that's one fewer than OHIM, which has Italian and Spanish but not Dutch), but one more than the non-EU European Patent Office (English, French and German). According to the 2008 annual report, in that year the office received 3,012 new applications and the number of rights in force stood at 15,590.
