The European Patent Office revises its guidelines for patent examination every two years and these normally appear in November. The last update was due in November 2020, but has been delayed because of the Covid19 pandemic and these will now come into effect on 1 March 2021.
A preliminary version of the guidelines in English has now appeared on the EPO’s website at this link. There are a number of important revisions that we shall deal with in separate posts. It’s interesting to note that a real effort has been put into making the guidelines gender-neutral with many references to “he” or “him” being replaced by the gender-neutral pronouns, they, it, or them.
Currently the guidelines or only in English. It will be interesting to see how the office deals with the complexities of the German and French translations.
