EPO Divisional Deadline Changed.
The European Patent Office has reformed the rules for filing divisional patent applications. As of 1 April 2010, a time limit that is relative to the examination of the application applies. These changes also apply to currently pending cases.
As of 1 April 2010, there are two possible circumstances under which a divisional application may be filed and these will have different deadlines:
- Voluntary Divisional Applications
An applicant may voluntarily file a divisional application at any time while an application is pending up to 2 years from the date of the first office action as issued by the Examining Division (search report opinion does not count for these purposes).
- Mandatory Divisional Applications (This is the EPO's terminology not ours!)
An applicant may file a divisional application in response to a lack of unity objection up to 2 years from when the lack of unity objection was raised by the Examining Division for the first time.
Under certain exceptional circumstances, the mandatory divisional deadline may be restarted. However, this is generally out of our control as these circumstances are reliant on the actions of the EPO Examiner. As such, we recommend that any divisional applications are filed by the voluntary deadline.
Note 1: This provision applies retrospectively to all currently pending European Patent Applications. If the voluntary deadline has already expired or expires before 1 October 2010 then the transitional provisions allow for filing of divisional applications up to 1 October 2010.
Note 2: The deadlines apply to a whole family of cases so divisional applications (or divisions of divisional applications) will not have their own deadlines.