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Changes Coming to Divisional Application Practice in Europe

By Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, Chris Singer, Sherri Oslick, and Jason Derry

By Christopher P. Singer -- One of our European associates, Forresters, alerted us today about change to Rule 36 EPC that was enacted on March 26, 2009 by the EPO Administrative Council. The rule change is expected to limit the opportunities for divisional application filings in Europe, relative to the current rule, in an effort to curtail the current "abusive" practice of divisional application filing in Europe. Forresters' website has posted an announcement with an overview of how the new rule is likely to impact divisional practice. Briefly, the changed rule now features a two year window provision within which...

Full post as published by Patent Docs on March 27, 2009 (boomark / email).