4. Search the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal

HTML version

To optimise your search within the full-text HTML version of the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal:

– access the Advanced Website Search Tool

–expand the search options by selecting the "advanced search" function; and

– under the heading "Legal text", restrict to "Case Law of the Boards of Appeal".

It is also possible to search in more than one legal text simultaneously, or for example to also include results from the decisions database by additionally selecting "Decisions of the EPO boards of appeal". The use of Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and proximity (NEAR) operators is supported and the available filters (date, language) can also be used to optimise search results.  

The 10^th edition of the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal also offers users the possibility to search on a topic basis using the "Detailed table of contents". This replaces the "General Index" from previous editions.  

PDF version

By downloading the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal as a PDF, it is also possible to access the fully-expandable table of contents in the left-side margin and to use this to quickly navigate to the desired chapters. You will be able to access the table of contents while simultaneously viewing the text of the chapters. This expandable table of contents can be accessed by clicking on the "bookmarks", "contents" or similarly named tab in the PDF (browser/application dependent).