Keeping Up With Europe's Pregrant Description Amendments

It is long-standing practice for examining divisions at the European Patent Office to require the description of a patent application to be amended into conformity with the allowable claims prior to grant.

However, in 2021, the patent office's guidelines for examination were updated to make this requirement more stringent. The issue of description amendment has been a hot topic ever since.

This is because of applicants' and attorneys' general aversion to substantial amendment to the description due to the additional cost and potentially harmful postgrant implications, as well as Technical Board of Appeal disagreement over whether there is a legal basis in the European Patent Convention, or EPC, for requiring such amendments.