Annual Report 2025 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office

The Annual Report 2025 of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office was published today. It is available in English, German and French on the Boards' website.

Ensuring the timely delivery of high-quality decisions remained a priority in 2025. At the end of last year, 
2 220 technical appeal cases were pending, 1 167 fewer than at the end of 2024. The number of cases older than 24 months was reduced from 729 to 234, accounting for 10.5% of the total. The Enlarged Board issued three referral decisions and settled almost twice as many petitions for review as in 2024.

Exchanges with judicial counterparts and user associations were once again a key pillar of the Boards' quality initiatives, and a workflow to ensure the timely and coherent processing of parallel proceedings before the Boards of Appeal and the Unified Patent Court was implemented. 

Representatives of the Boards of Appeal participated as speakers in around 30 conferences, seminars and round-table discussions. The 11th edition of the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal was also published last year, with an average of over 49 000 page views per month.

The Boards of Appeal will relocate to the centre of Munich at the end of 2026. Preparations have been made to ensure the seamless continuation of the Boards' activities.

Contact

Nikolaus Obrovski
Jeannine Hoppe
Spokespersons of the Boards of Appeal
Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office
Richard-Reitzner-Allee 8 | 85540 Haar | Germany
[email protected]