3. Amended sheets 

Any change, other than the rectification of obvious mistakes in the claims, the description or the drawings is considered an amendment. Unless withdrawn or superseded by later amendments, any change considered an amendment must be taken into consideration for the purpose of the international preliminary examination.

See H‑II and H‑III for details.

It may happen that the replacement sheets contain formal defects: they may not comply with the physical requirements of Rule 11, or they may contain marked-up text, instead of only clean text. If, when preparing a WO-IPEA (Form 408) or the international preliminary examination report (Form 409), the examiner considers that there are still defects in the form of the international application, the examiner should include this opinion and the reasons for it in Box VII of the WO-IPEA and/or IPER.