Article 88

EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE

Information from the EPO

Notice from the European Patent Office dated 18 August 2014 concerning updating of the Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office

By decision of the President of the EPO pursuant to Article 10(2) EPC dated 18 August 2014, the Guidelines for Examination have been amended. The new Guidelines will enter into force on 1 November 2014. This will be the official edition superseding the "September 2013" edition as from 1 November 2014.

The latest edition of the Guidelines is to be found on the EPO website at: www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/guidelines.html. The Guidelines will also be issued in paper form and can be requested using this order form (https://forms.epo.org/service-support/ordering/books-order-form.html).

The "November 2014" edition of the Guidelines will be published on the EPO website a month before its entry into force in order to inform users of the corresponding procedural changes in advance.

A full list of the sections of the Guidelines in which amendments have been made is available on the EPO website, with hyperlinks to the relevant section. Details of what has been amended in each section can be viewed in the HTML version by ticking the "Show modifications" check-box in the upper right corner, which displays inserted text with a green background and deleted text in red strikethrough font. In the paper version the amended or new text as compared with the 2013 version is indicated by lines in the margin.