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EUROPEAN PATENT CONVENTION

- Revision of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal -

Decisions of the first instance departments of the European Patent Office (EPO) can be ap-pealed, i.e. challenged, before the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, in a judicial procedure (proper to an administrative court), as opposed to an administrative procedure. These boards act as the final instances in the granting and opposition procedures before the EPO.

The Boards of Appeal operate by their own Rules of Procedure which are now revised. The revised Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA) were adopted by the Boards of Appeal Committee on 4 April 2019 and were unanimously approved by the Administrative Council at its 160th meeting on 26 and 27 June 2019. They will come into force on 1 January 2020, and are therefore referenced below as "RPBA 2020".

The aims of the revision of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal are to increase

   - efficiency, by reducing the number of issues to be treated,

   - predictability for the parties and 

   - harmonisation.

In addition, important elements of case management have been introduced so as to allow the Boards of Appeal to organise their work and use their resources in a more efficient way.

Please note that the RPBA 2020 will, in general, apply to any appeal pending on, or filed after, the date of their entry into force (see Article 25 RPBA 2020).

The English language version is available in PDF format. The PDF file contains the text of the revised Rules of Procedure as well as a table setting out the current version of the RPBA (in force until 31 December 2019) in the left-hand column, the amendments in the middle column, and explanatory remarks in the right-hand column.

For further information about the EPO’s Rules of the Procedure, please contact your usual GILLE HRABAL advisor.

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