With the April 2026 EPO Guidelines now in force, practitioners this week have been focusing on three changes with immediate drafting and prosecution relevance. First, the EPO has formally integrated colour and greyscale drawings into practice for electronic filings, moving beyond the old black-and-white-only baseline. Second, the Guidelines make clear that applicants and representatives remain fully responsible for everything filed with the EPO, even where patent applications or replies have been prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence. Third, the revised text now reflects Enlarged Board decisions G 1/24 and G 1/23, sharpening the treatment of claim interpretation and the prior-art status of products already placed on the market.
These are not isolated edits. Together they point to a more evidence-driven and accountability-heavy practice environment. Colour drawings will help in areas such as interfaces, materials and complex structures, but they also make consistency, contrast and amendment discipline more important. AI can still support drafting, but it no longer leaves room for anyone to treat machine-generated text as a compliance buffer. And with G 1/24 and G 1/23 now expressly embedded in the Guidelines, applicants would be wise to review how they define claim terms, document product features and position prior art from the outset rather than trying to repair those issues later in examination or post-grant disputes.
