EPO

The European Patent Office (EPO) is an organ of the European Patent Organisation, an intergovernmental organisation that was set up on 7 October 1977 on the basis of the European Patent Convention (EPC) signed in Munich in 1973. The EPO is responsible for the uniform procedure to grant European patents. Once the EPO has granted a European patent, the patent holder can validate it in every single contracting state. In the future, the EPO will also be in charge of deciding on requests for unitary effect of European patents under the Unitary Patent system.

251 articles available

Laurence Lai (Simmons & Simmons LLP)

EPO to offer new refund rates for appeal fee

March 12, 2020

The EPO’s biennial fee increases come into force on 1 April 2020 and include a 20% hike of the appeal fee. At the same time, new appeal fee refund provisions are being introduced through an amendment…

Thorsten Bausch (Hoffmann Eitle)

News from and about Eponia

March 5, 2020

While real news about one of the most popular topics of this blog, i.e. the UPC, is rare and no one following our blogs regularly (see e.g. 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019) should be greatly surprised…

James Prankerd Smith (GJE Intellectual Property)

Admissibility of late inventive step attacks at the EPO

February 19, 2020

Two decisions T 0184/17 and T 0603/14 were recently issued concerning admissibility of late inventive step attacks on appeal. Both cases were decided under the old Rules of Procedure of the Boards…

Harriet Crawford (GJE Intellectual Property)

Abridged EPO appeal decisions

January 22, 2020

T1687/17 is an early example of what an abridged decision under the new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) looks like: very short and published only a week after the oral proceedings,…

Richard Gillespie (Inventorship)

What's the worst that could happen - Constitutional complaints against the EPO in Germany

January 18, 2020

Patent Attorneys like myself are not known for their love of excitement. For example, I like reading lists. One regrettably exciting item that appears to have slipped off the ‘things to look out for…

Derk Visser (EIP)

When is a sub-range novel?

January 13, 2020

The December issue 4|2019 of the journal epi Information contains four interesting contributions to the discussion on the novelty test for sub-ranges as used by the EPO. The EPO has a special novelty…

Kluwer Patent blogger

EPO and EU Member States call for speedy implementation Unitary Patent and UPC

January 10, 2020

President António Campinos of the European Patent Office, the Chair of the EPO Unitary Patent Select Committee and members of the UPC Preparatory Committee met today to discuss the implementation of…

Kluwer Patent blogger

January 8, 2020

A post on the new guidelines for examination of the European Patent Office tops the list of most popular articles of the Kluwer Patent Blog in 2019. The enduring social problems at the EPO led to a…

Gemma Wooden, Matthew Blaseby, Derk Visser (EIP)

Hope or no hope in inventive step, that is the question

December 24, 2019

One of the key questions in the assessment of inventive step within the EPO is whether or not the skilled person will adapt or modify the teaching of the closest prior art and arrive at the invention…

Popular categories