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The Organization's goals and functions stipulated by the Eurasian Patent Convention have shaped the management structure of EAPO. EAPO has an optimal number of employees, which follows from the principle of self-financing.
The management structure of EAPO had stabilized by 1998 and underwent no further major changes until the beginning of 2000. The current (year 2000) management structure is given in Table 1.
At the core of any management structure are common employees, and the management of EAPO pays significant attention to the selection and placing of these. The average employee age as of January 1, 2000 was 41 years. EAPO has highly qualified staff - see Table 2.
Table 2
| Number of persons | % | |
| Education of EAPO employees | ||
| Higher | 54 | 76,1 |
| Secondary vocational, secondary special * | 4 | 5,6 |
| Secondary * | 12 | 16,9 |
| Partial secondary * | 1 | 1,4 |
| Scientific degrees | ||
| Doctor of science | 3 | 4,2 |
| Candidate of science | 9 | 12,7 |
| Attending institutions of higher learning | 4 | 5,6 |
| Attending graduate school | 3 | 4,2 |
| Length of employment in EAPO: | ||
| Up to 1 year | 12 | 16,9 |
| 1 year | 16 | 22,5 |
| 2 years | 14 | 19,7 |
| 3 years | 15 | 21,2 |
| 4 years | 14 | 19,7 |
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* Technical and service workers that perform auxiliary tasks to support EAPO employees have secondary vocational, secondary special, secondary, or partial secondary education.
Changes in the number of EAPO employees are related to the increase in the numbers of Eurasian patent applications filed with EAPO, and to the integration of management processes such as the use of the automated system of tracking the processing of Eurasian applications and the maintenance of Eurasian patents, and with the creation of information and search systems and the maintenance of own Web-site in the Internet that contains information on the activities of the Office.
Changes in the number of EAPO employees by year are shown in Diagram 1.
According to Rule 9 of the Administrative Regulations of the Eurasian Patent Convention, EAPO staff is selected from among the representatives of states party to the Eurasian Patent Convention. Each member state has its own quota. Normally employees are hired via competition. The quota distribution of employees, except those not subject to quotas, is given in Table 3:
Table 3
| Country | Number of people |
| Republic of Azerbaijan | 1 |
| Republic of Armenia | 3 |
| Republic of Belarus | 1 |
| Republic of Kazakhstan | 1 |
| Republic of Kyrgyzstan | 1 |
| Republic of Moldova | 2 |
| Russian Federation | 20 |
| Republic of Tajikistan | 2 |
| Turkmenistan | 1 |
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In order to further improve the interaction of EAPO personnel with Eurasian Patent Attorneys, regular seminars are held on the practice of using the EAPC; these seminars aim at improving the normative and legal base, and rationalizing and streamlining the examination process. As of January 1, 2000, 150 patent attorneys that represent all the member states are registered with EAPO. The makeup of Eurasian patent attorneys is presented in Diagram 2. | |
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