International Patent Institute

The International Patent Institute (or IIB standing for Institut International des Brevets, its French name) was an intellectual property organisation established on June 6, 1947 in The Hague, Netherlands, by a set of European countries, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. It was integrated into the European Patent Organisation on January 1, 1978. Its purpose was to centralize patent searching and archiving as well as the resources needed for the prior art searches for its member countries.[1]

The integration of the International Patent Institute into the European Patent Organisation led in practice to the creation of the branch of the European Patent Office (EPO) at Rijswijk in The Netherlands, a town close to The Hague. This branch still exists and is one of three locations of the EPO (along with Munich and Berlin) where European patent applications may be filed.