Following the issuance of G 2/21 last year, we asked whether the plausibility elephant had left the room. Our Kluwer colleague and friend Miquel Montañá discussed this issue more recently here. Several decisions have meanwhile been issued applying the new “test” in G2/21, the lucidity of which may have reminded readers of the oracle of…

The EPO’s Boards of Appeal are famously strict on added matter. But normally applicants can sleep soundly at night after making amendments based entirely on the original dependent claims having appropriate back references, especially where the amendments still cover the examples. T 1137/21 however might cause some applicants sleepless nights, as the Board found the…

The EPO has proposed new amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) to support more ambitious timeliness objectives. In our view, they are unlikely to shorten appeal proceedings, will reduce the quality of decisions, and are unfair on Respondents so should not be adopted in full. Background As can be…

It will be nothing new for regular readers of this blog that I and many others have long been advocating for more well-qualified examiners at the EPO, e.g. here. Obviously, these examiners also need to be given adequate time to scrutinize the ever-increasing number of new patent applications per year thoroughly. Alas, it will also…

The concept of plausibility has caused great controversy in European patent law in recent years. It was hoped that the decision of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO in G 2/21 would bring clarity. Since the referral questions by Board 3.3.02 were very clear and seemed to present reasonable alternatives from which…