EPO

As readers will be aware, last Thursday, the European Patent Office ("EPO")'s Enlarged Board of Appeal ("EBA") published a new decision (G 1/25) in the saga of referrals seeking guidance on the…

G 1/25, the long-awaited decision on adaptation of the description, was issued today. Adaptation will continue to be required at the EPO, but only if a claim amendment introduces an inconsistency…

This is just a short post on an interesting new development on exceptions to the EPO’s strict approach to admissibility on appeal. T 715/24 reason 2 suggests that claim interpretation is to be…

G 1/25 addresses a particularly controversial feature of EPO practice: the requirement to adapt the description. The long-anticipated hearing on G 1/25 took place on 8 May 2026, and unfolded in a…

I have long intended to write a piece about Artificial Intelligence (AI), but this seems to be one of these subjects where the world turns faster than my ability to process it. Nonetheless, here we…

In J 1/24, Board 3.1.01 (the Legal Board of Appeal) surprised many practitioners by treating a divisional filed after the publication of the mention of the grant as validly filed. As this went…

EPO practice on added matter is well known to be strict, with many patents being revoked using this principle every year. Particularly tricky during EPO opposition proceedings is the “inescapable…

T 1913/21 has received attention for nicely illustrating the difference between process claims and second non-medical use claims —a category of claims shaped by landmark Enlarged Board decisions G 2…

Defining antibodies by functional features is not always straightforward at the EPO. T326/22 is a nice example of how this can be achieved.       To briefly recap the standard EPO approach, an…