The EPO’s 2026 Guidelines for Examination took effect in April, and a continuing series of Marks & Clerk analyses has highlighted three procedural changes with immediate practical relevance. PACE requests for accelerated search have been withdrawn because the EPO now treats timely search reports as part of its normal workflow, although accelerated examination under PACE remains available. Applicants therefore have less reason to focus on expediting search and more reason to prepare early for the transition from the search opinion into substantive examination.The treatment of amendments has...
According to recent reporting by Asia IP, and as confirmed by official information released by the relevant authorities, from March 1, 2026, PCT applicants filing through IP Australia may designate the European Patent Office (EPO) or the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as their International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA), in addition to the previously available options of IP Australia and the Korean authority. For applicants using Australia as the receiving Office, this is more than a procedural update. It materially...
At the end of March, the European Patent Office (EPO) publicly outlined the latest outcome of its dialogue with the German Association of Industry Intellectual Property Experts (VPP) and major corporate representatives: AI will continue to be integrated more deeply into the patent granting process and user-facing services, but this will not mean handing legal judgment over to machines. The shared position is becoming clearer: AI should strengthen efficiency, consistency and accessibility, while final legal decisions, procedural control and institutional accountability must remain firmly in...
In its 2026 revision list to the Guidelines for Examination, the EPO expressly identifies the “Abolition of PACE for search” as one of the main amendments in Part E on procedural matters. This is more than editorial housekeeping. It reflects a reordering of how acceleration is meant to work in European patent practice: for newer European filings, the EPO has for years relied on a service objective to issue the extended or partial search report within six months rather than on routine applicant-triggered PACE requests for search; it then confirmed in a formal notice published at the end of...
On 1 April 2026, the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that filing in DOCX is now available to all users after a successful pilot phase. Under the accompanying news item, presidential decision and Official Journal notice, European patent applications and subsequent documents may now, in addition to existing formats such as PDF, be filed in DOCX via Online Filing 2.0 and, where applicable, via MyEPO. The change is framed as part of the EPO’s broader digital transformation and its move toward end-to-end digital processing.The practical significance goes well beyond adding another upload...
The 2026 edition of the EPO Guidelines for Examination has been in force since 1 April. By May, the new text is no longer a future reference point; it is now shaping drafting, prosecution timing and responses to examination communications. For European patent applicants, the practical impact is concentrated in a few areas: responsibility for AI-assisted drafting, the end of accelerated search under PACE, the novelty effect of product disclosures, and the way claims are interpreted in light of the description and drawings.These changes matter at the level of filing decisions. Using AI tools...
After a pilot phase, the European Patent Office has announced the wider use of AI-assisted tools for preparing minutes of oral proceedings. Under the workflow described by the EPO, audio from the hearing can first be transcribed by an AI tool, after which members of the division may use another AI tool to prepare a draft of the minutes; the final record remains under the responsibility of the competent examining or opposition division. The point is not to automate oral proceedings, but to make an important procedural record faster to produce and easier to check.For applicants, opponents and...
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...
Following the weekend maintenance on 23 May, the EPO’s digital direction is easier to read than before. Public materials do not present every change as one single product launch, but the pattern is now clear: MyEPO is being reinforced as the operational hub for file access and online interaction, AI-supported classification is being extended behind the scenes, and AI-assisted minuting in oral proceedings is moving beyond pilot use.This is not just another interface refresh. For applicants and representatives, the more important point is that the EPO is steadily connecting filing, online...
On 17 February 2026, the UPC Court of Appeal in bioMérieux v Labrador Diagnostics refused to stay a revocation appeal because of parallel EPO opposition proceedings, and also refused to extend the deadline for the statement of grounds while waiting for the EPO oral hearing. The signal is straightforward: the mere fact that the same European patent is being contested before both the UPC and the EPO does not automatically trigger a “wait for Munich” logic. A stay remains discretionary, and the court is looking at the concrete balance of interests rather than at parallel opposition as a...
Debate is intensifying across European patent practice over a practical question that used to sound theoretical: what happens when generative AI starts mass-producing technical disclosures that are later cited against fresh filings? What can be verified publicly is not a newly published EPO rule aimed specifically at “synthetic prior art”, but the continued force of a familiar one in the 2026 EPO Guidelines: a prior-art document must give the skilled person enough information to carry out the relevant technical teaching. A polished text is not enough on its own.That point matters much more...
The EPO’s public guidance is making one point harder to ignore: for AI-assisted inventions, the real issue is no longer whether AI was used, but whether the application clearly ties a claimed technical effect to a reproducible technical solution and identifiable human technical contribution. For filings built on model training, data selection or AI-assisted discovery, that goes directly to patentability, sufficiency and later validity risk.The point many applicants still misread is disclosure. The EPO does not generally require applicants to hand over the specific training dataset. But...
According to SEALSQ’s announcement of 18 June 2026, the European Patent Office has granted a divisional patent covering what the company calls a “Back-to-Physical” NFT architecture. The point is not an NFT in the abstract. The claimed model ties cryptographic credentials and ownership records to tamper-resistant semiconductor hardware so that a physical object carries a verifiable digital identity at chip level.That is why this development matters beyond blockchain headlines. For patent teams, the more interesting signal is that a data- and asset-heavy concept may become easier to defend...
Moldova became the 40th member state of the European Patent Organisation on 1 June 2026. European patent applications filed on or after that date now automatically designate Moldova as an EPC contracting state, removing the separate validation fee previously used under the validation system. The same filing-date test applies to PCT cases: an international application filed on or after 1 June 2026 can cover Moldova through the European phase.The transition still requires careful docketing. European and international applications filed before 1 June, as well as divisional applications derived...
On 4 August 2026, the Munich central division of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) issued a procedural order in a dispute involving a communications standard-essential patent (SEP). With an invalidity counterclaim pending before the UPC and a parallel opposition proceeding before the European Patent Office (EPO), the court refused a request to stay the UPC case until the EPO process had run its course and instead placed the validity dispute on a tighter timetable.The practical message is difficult to miss: a parallel EPO opposition may not provide a dependable route for slowing UPC...
On 29 August 2026, the Unified Patent Court Court of Appeal set out a stricter approach to requests to pause preliminary-injunction proceedings when an EPO opposition is running in parallel. The existence of an opposition, even one moving on an accelerated timetable, is not enough on its own. A defendant seeking a stay must put forward an invalidity case strong enough to show a very high likelihood that the patent will be revoked at the EPO.The ruling narrows the tactical value of using EPO opposition proceedings to slow urgent UPC relief. Patent owners gain more confidence that a PI...
The European Patent Office's revised Programme for Accelerated Prosecution (PACE) has applied since 1 February 2026 to PACE requests filed on or after that date. Under the current rules PACE is available for the examination stage only, and requests for accelerated search are no longer accepted. A request must be made on the dedicated EPO Form 1005 and filed online; the EPO does not process requests made informally or on paper. As a rule only one PACE request may be filed per application during examination, and applicants who request acceleration for all or most of their applications...
On 21 September the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that its Technology Intelligence Platform (TIP) provides free access to PATSTAT data together with enhanced Python notebooks, letting users process, analyse and visualise worldwide patent data in the browser and blend it with business data and other statistics. The platform already offers more than 100 Python notebooks, supported by e-learning modules and quick-start guides; a new collection of advanced PATSTAT notebooks takes users from the fundamental concepts of patent data to advanced patent analytics methods, covering patent...
The European Patent Office (EPO) reported on 25 September on the latest progress of IT co-operation within the European Patent Network: the programme, which began at the annual co-operation meeting in Kilkenny in 2019, now encompasses over 230 initiatives in European Patent Convention contracting states and partner offices, more than 180 of them already completed, and every EPC national office takes part in at least one activity. The shared capabilities built up so far span data quality and interoperability, search and AI-enabled tools, Front Office services and reusable Digital Tool Kit...
The European Patent Office (EPO) used the September 2026 issue of its Official Journal, published on 30 September, to announce a set of procedural and digital changes: a revised PACE programme for accelerated prosecution, a timeline panel in MyEPO and version 4 of the DOCX definition all apply from 1 October 2026, while mandatory electronic filing and electronic notification in the grant procedure will enter into force on 1 April 2027. PACE is confined to the examination phase. A request for a single application must be filed through MyEPO or online using EPO Form 1005, bulk requests must...
