10.1 Formal requirements 

Minutes of oral proceedings must be drawn up.

The person conducting the oral proceedings must ensure that an employee is available to keep minutes throughout the whole oral proceedings. If necessary, different employees may carry out the task of minute-writing in sequence. The minutes must then make clear which section was drawn up by which employee. The employees in question are normally members of the competent department, e.g. the examining or opposition division. The minutes are formatted after the oral proceedings.

The minutes must be authenticated by the employee responsible for drawing them up and by the person who conducted the oral proceedings, either by signing them or by other appropriate means. If, exceptionally, the employee responsible cannot sign the minutes, one of the other members of the division may sign them on that employee's behalf, subject to the conditions referred to in E‑X, 2.3E‑IX, 2.3. The minutes are not signed by the parties, but a copy must be notified to them as soon as possible after the oral proceedings.

Provided the parties have been informed, the EPO may make sound recordings of the oral proceedings. However, no person other than an EPO employee is allowed to make any recording or retransmit any part of the oral proceedings, whether in the form of an image or sound or both (see  OJ EPO 2025, A32,OJ EPO 1986, 63, OJ EPO 2022, A106).

Sound recordings are made only where evidence is taken (E‑IV, 1.7). The recording is kept until the end of any possible proceedings before the EPO. Sound recordings are also made when minutes of oral proceedings held by videoconference before examining and opposition divisions are drawn up with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) (OJ EPO 2025, A32). These recordings will be deleted once the minutes of the oral proceedings are issued to the parties to of the proceedings. Where sound recordings are made of the taking of evidence or for AI-assisted minutes, copies Copies of the recordings are not made available will not be provided to the parties.

The minutes must first state the date of the oral proceedings, the names of the members of the department, e.g. the opposition division, present and the name or names of the minute-writer or writers. They must also include the details referred to in E‑III, 10.3.