2.3 Amendments using copies 

Amendments, particularly to the description or claims, may be made by using copies in accordance with the following procedure:

If deemed expedient, the examining division or formalities officer may, on a copy of one or more pages of the documents to be amended, put forward suggestions as to how amendments should be made in such a way as to take account of the objections raised. The annotated copies (not the working documents which are to remain in the dossier) will then be forwarded to the applicant or, in opposition proceedings, to the proprietor of the patent and the other parties, in the communication setting out the objections. In this communication, the applicant or proprietor will not only be informed of the deficiencies recorded and invited to adopt a position or submit amendments within a fixed time limit, but will also be invited simultaneously to resubmit the said copy and – as an alternative to submitting replacement pages – to indicate on this copy, separately from the comments of the examining division (typewritten and in such a way as to be well legible after photocopying), any amendments to be made to the pages concerned. Opponents may also be invited to submit their comments in the same way.

The parties may also submit copies of one or more amended pages on their own initiative. The filing of completely retyped documents is normally objected to, for reasons of procedural economy, as these documents will have to be checked for correspondence with the original documents (see T 113/92). Requests to this effect will, therefore, normally not be admitted under Rule 137(3). Only where the amendments are so extensive as to affect the legibility of the copies, replacement pages must be filed. In this case such pages may also be requested by the examining division on its own initiative.