Examination

Delivering thorough examinations on time

Timeliness is important to our users - the mean duration of the examination procedure for applications granted in 2022 was 24.9 months.

Timeliness was improved without compromising on quality by deploying a prioritisation scheme and developing new examiner tools.

Independent quality audits

In 2023, the number of files for which we had no audit findings increased from 76.6% to 77.9% (our target was 85%), while the number of audited files increased from 832 to 1 050, thereby narrowing the confidence interval from 2.9% to 2.5%.

Following questions from external stakeholders about the transparency of audit findings, a new bar chart was introduced in 2022 to show the requested details and to demonstrate the thoroughness of the quality audit. This was continued in 2023. The findings are classified according to user priorities and feedback.

Audit results show that although there is still work to be done to achieve excellence, there was a positive development in overall quality in 2023 over 2022, with a reduction in major findings with potential impact on the validity of a future granted patent. About 13% of files concern findings with potential impact on validity in 2023 compared to the previous level of around 15% in 2022, demonstrating the EPO's commitment to improving quality. Files with findings concerning clarity (5.3% in 2023) and sufficiency of disclosure (0.4% in 2023) are now identified separately. In 2024, we will look more closely at the underlying reasons for the clarity findings.