An Interesting Viewpoint On Support At The EPO

I recently came across an interesting blog post (link below) while browsing my Linkedin feed. The author, Martin Wilming, puts forward some interesting points regarding the requirement in Europe to bring the description into line with the claims.

European patent attorneys will be all too familiar with the EPO's recent strict application of Art 84 EPC as it relates to amending the description such that the claims are "supported by the description". In the past, once an allowable claim set had been arrived at, it was often possible to simply amend the description to replace the phrase "in an embodiment there is provided" with "disclosed herein is", when describing examples not covered by the claims. However, the EPO's current approach is to request that such examples be deleted from the description or marked as not forming part of the claimed invention. That is, under the current approach it is not enough that the subject matter of the claims appear in the description,