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Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office (status December 2007)

The President of the EPO decided on 3 April 2007 to amend the Guidelines for Examination. This amendment has been occasioned primarily by the amendment of the Articles agreed at the Diplomatic Conference in November 2000 ("EPC 2000") and the corresponding amendment of the Implementing Regulations. These revised Guidelines are therefore be applicable as of 13 December 2007.

The amendments carried out in this revision of the Guidelines are mainly concerned with EPC 2000. This complete revision of the EPC has resulted in the need for amendments throughout the Guidelines. The most extensive of these concern the requirements for obtaining a filing date and the subsequent examination of formal requirements. Other significant amendments concern the requirements for claiming priority, language requirements, legal remedies (further processing and re-establishment of rights) and procedural changes for PCT and Euro-PCT applications. Additionally, an entirely new chapter (D-X) has been added dealing with the new limitation and revocation procedure. Moreover, amendment of references has been necessary in virtually every section of the Guidelines, because of the renumbering of the Implementing Regulations. As was the case for the Implementing Regulations, the opportunity has been taken to rationalise the numbering of the Guidelines. Furthermore, a number of amendments have been made to bring the Guidelines into line with decisions of the boards of appeal on issues important for search, examination and opposition, and with prevailing EPO practice, and to correct a number of errors.

It should also be noted that these Guidelines differ in some aspects from the draft version which was published in English on the EPO website in April 2007. Most of these differences are merely minor corrections and updating of references. However a few (still relatively minor) changes in substance have been made. These concern the exchange of priority documents recently agreed with the Korean Intellectual Property Office, declaration of priority (see A-III, 6.5), translations of priority documents (A-III, 6.8, C-V, 3.4 and D-VII, 2), publication of sequence listings (A-VI, 1.3), the arrangements for deposit accounts (A-XI), the reservation entered by Spain (C-III, 8.3) and the treatment in opposition of missing parts filed under Rule 56 (D-V, 2.2).

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