Support of the Description and Art. 84 EPC : Why Reactive Amendments to the Description Harm Legal Certainty.

Journal article

1 electronic resource (page 145-152)

In its granting procedures, the European Patent Office often requests that the patent description conforms to the claims granted. Amendments to the description are regularly motivated to comply with Art. 84 EPC, which requires support of the description. Decisions T 1024/18 and T 1989/18 form two prominent polar opposites of narrow and wide interpretation of the description support criterion according to Art. 84 EPC. T 1024/18 argues that support of the description should not involve a reader being confronted with any information conflicting with the wording of the claims. This means that embodiments of the invention which are not consistent with the claims must therefore be deleted. In this context, additional information of a further non-covered embodiment is regarded as conflicting information. However, any of these reactive amendments can give rise to various legal problems that could even lead to a later revocation of the patent. In contrast, the wide interpretation of T 1989/18 of the description support criterion does not require any post-grant amendments to the description and does not cause these legal problems.

Crossref

GRUR International ; 74, 2, 2025, 2632-8550.

[Oxford, England] : Oxford University Press (OUP), 2025.

English

https://academic.oup.com/grurint/article/72/3/231/6998505

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