This sneaked under my radar so I will post it here. The European Guidelines for Examination are now revised annually. The most recent version was issued on 20 September 2013.
Details of the updates and a link to the most recent Guidelines can be found here: – http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/official-journal/information-epo/archive/20130920.html
As highlights:
- there is an update to the guidance for searching computer-implemented inventions and business methods;
- there is a guide to Early Processing for ex-PCT European applications; and
- stuff about amended Rule 53(3) EPC (sanction for not filing a translation of a priority document)
A nice little trick is that there is now a “track changes” style “show modifications” checkbox on the HTML Guidelines site. This shows the recent edits.
Just be careful: if you refer to a PDF copy, it would be easy to slip up by looking at the wrong edition. My tip is to use the HTML where you can.
