International Activities

EPO Symposium on the “Limitation of Amendment” under Article 123(2) of EPC

Mr. Hirabayashi, member of the International Affairs Committee participated in the above symposium, which was held at the EPO headquarters (Munich, Germany) on February 7, 2014. This symposium was held for EPO to carefully listen to the users because EPO had received frequent complaints from user organizations that the current judgment under EPC Article 123(2) is so strict that substantially only literal amendments are allowed.

EPO expressed its intention to reflect the results of this meeting in the Examination Guidelines scheduled due to be revised in November 2014 and the training programs for EPO examiners to be revised. The EPO also explained that the current practice of EPC Article 123(2) was intended to take into account the balance of benefits between applicants and third parties and that the criterion of "directly and unambiguously derived" was established by an accumulation of Appeal Board Decisions.
JIPA, as a user in Japan, said that it did not request a drastic relaxation of the criteria on new matters from the current criteria but requested that the Trilateral Offices should conduct fairly consistent examination.

In this meeting, we felt that EPO made an effort to take the users' opinions seriously. It is expected that the Trilateral Patent Offices will take this occasion to promote the harmonization of their examination practice of judgment on new matters.

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