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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 purpose of the EPO opposition proceedings is to give members of the public, such as competitors of the patent proprietor, the opportunity to challenge centrally before the EPO the validity of a granted European patent. [8] [notes 1] No commercial or any other interest whatsoever need be shown. [3]
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.
This template creates an external link to a given section of the Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office (EPO) on the web site of the European Patent Office, by appending to the following URL:
The EPO is neither a European Union nor a Council of Europe institution. [1] A patent granted by the EPO can be turned either into a bundle of independent national European patents enforceable before national courts according to different national legislations and procedures, [ 2 ] or into a European unitary patent covering multiple countries ...
The MPEP is available in both PDF and HTML versions. [2] The current version of the MPEP is the 9th Edition, which was released in March 2014. The MPEP has traditionally been available in paper form , but electronic versions are now used more often, particularly because an applicant only may consult the electronic versions while taking the ...
EPO headquarters in Munich. European patent applications can be filed at the EPO at Munich, Germany, at The Hague, Netherlands, [11] at Berlin, Germany, [12] or "if the law of a Contracting State so permits, at the central industrial property office or other competent authority of that State". [13] This latter provision is important in some ...
Under the new rules, if the claims as filed in a European patent application contain a plurality of independent claims in the same claim category and if the EPO considers in that case that the claims therefore do not comply with Rule 43(2) EPC, the EPO may "invite the applicant to indicate, within a period of two months, the claims complying ...