Paul Brewin has been working at the European Patent Office (EPO) for 16 years - his main role has been in charge of patent publication systems which is an SGML based system. Papers have been presented on this system at previous conferences. He has been contributor and editor of several World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) standards. He is now also involved in online filing of patent applications and in particular authoring patents in XML. Over the last year he has worked with the US, Japan Patent Offices and WIPO on a suite of XML standards to be used by patent offices for electronic filing of patent applications.