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The Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office (or, for short, the EPO Guidelines) are general instructions, for the examiners working at the European Patent Office (EPO) as well as for the parties interacting with the EPO, [notes 1] on the practice and procedure at the EPO in the various aspects of the prosecution of European patent applications and European patents.
The EPC requires that national courts must consider the "direct product of a patented process" to be an infringement. Article 64(2) EPC reads: If the subject-matter of the European patent is a process, the protection conferred by the patent shall extend to the products directly obtained by such process.
In this case, after the payment, by the patentee, of the fee for publishing a new specification (the so-called "B2 publication") and the filing of a translation of any amended claims into the two official languages of the EPO other than the language of procedure, the new patent specification is published.
The grant procedure before the European Patent Office (EPO) is an ex parte, administrative procedure, which includes the filing of a European patent application, [1] the examination of formalities, [2] the establishment of a search report, [3] the publication of the application, [4] its substantive examination, [5] and the grant of a patent, [6 ...
New Rule 36(1)(a) introduced a time limit for voluntary division of the parent application, while Rule 36(1)(b) provides a time limit for mandatory division of the parent application in case of a lack of unity under Article 82 EPC. [15] "Mandatory" in that sense means that, to cover each of the non-unitary inventions (i.e. the inventions that ...
The EPC of 1973 made no provision for a limitation procedure, [6] and a fortiori no provision for centrally limiting a European patent before the EPO after the nine-month period for filing an opposition (nine months as from the date of grant of the European patent). The travaux préparatoires laid out the rationale for a limitation procedure:
The cases concern the patentability of biological products through the description of the procedure for achieving that product (a product-by-process claim). The Enlarged Board of Appeal ruled that such products were patentable and not in conflict with Article 53(b) EPC, which does not allow patents for "essentially biological" processes.
A European patent is the product of a unified grant procedure before the EPO under procedures established by the European Patent Convention (EPC). Before grant, a European patent application is a unitary legal entity. However, after grant, a "European patent" essentially ceases to have unitary character.