Complete searches and written opinions

Our goal at the search stage is to deliver complete searches and comprehensive written opinions in a consistent and harmonised manner. This has been strengthened through the implementation of the active search division, which means that every search product is now routed to all three members of the search division and the manager for review before being sent to the applicant.

EPO searches are globally recognised as being of the highest quality. This is only possible due to the dedication and skills of our staff and the immense resources and tools at their disposal. In 2023, our search reports and written opinions remained comprehensive and thorough:

• in around 84% of cases, we found prior art highly relevant for novelty or inventive step, enabling applicants to make informed and timely decisions
• 92.4% of our written opinions on patentability identified at least one area where the application needed to be amended
• 27% of our search reports contained at least one patent citation only available in an Asian language
• some 28% of our search reports contained at least one non-patent literature citation
• Around 25% of the search reports in the areas of video coding and transmission, wireless communication, IT security and Internet, and the Internet of Things contained at least one standards citation

In  2023, our strict, in-process, internal quality audits  identified a better prior art document in only 4% of sampled search reports; findings with added subject-matter improved from 1.8% in 2022 to 0.7% of audited files in 2023. Mean search timeliness for standard searches  (i.e. excluding non-unity, unclear and incomplete cases) was 5 months in 2023. In our most recent User Satisfaction Surveys, 80% of respondents were either satisfied or very satisfied with the EPO’s search services. See more statistics.

For more information, please see the Quality Report 2023.