5.4.3Amending applications before and during examination proceedings 

5.4.017You are not allowed to amend the description, claims or drawings before you receive the European search report. You should always indicate any amendments made and identify their basis in the application as filed. 

5.4.018Within the time limit for requesting examination or confirming that request (i.e. when replying to the invitation to comment on the objections raised in the search opinion), you may of your own volition amend the description, claims and drawings (see points 5.3.002, 5.4.005, 5.4.006 and 5.4.021).

5.4.019No further amendments are allowed without the examining division's consent. Amended claims may not relate to unsearched subject-matter which does not combine with the originally claimed invention to form a single general inventive concept. In deleting subject-matter from an application, you should avoid any statement which could be interpreted as abandonment of that subject-matter. Otherwise the subject-matter cannot be reinstated. 

5.4.020The Guidelines for Examination provide information about the limits to the amendments that you can make to the description, claims and drawings after receiving the communication under Rule 71(3). If you file amendments or corrections in reply to the communication under Rule 71(3) concerning the claims, you should consider whether this necessitates any adaptation of the description. To avoid potential delays in cases where adaptation is necessary, you should preferably provide an adapted description when filing amended claims. If you do not file an adapted description, the examining division may carry out the adaptation itself and propose these amendments in a second communication under Rule 71(3). Alternatively, it may resume examination and issue a communication pursuant to Article 94(3) requesting you to provide the adapted description before issuing a second communication under Rule 71(3). Once you have received the text communicated to you pursuant to Rule 71(3) (including minor amendments and/or corrections of errors, see point 5.4.011), further amendments will only be allowed under the discretionary power given to the examining division by Rule 137(3).

5.4.021The application may on no account be amended in such a way that it contains subject-matter which extends beyond the content of the application as filed (which does not include the priority document). However, subsequently filed examples or statements of advantage may be considered by the examiner as evidence in support of the invention's patentability. 

This technical information is generally added to the part of the file that is open to public inspection (see point 5.3.006). From the date on which it is added, it forms part of the state of the art within the meaning of Article 54(2) (see point 3.3.001). A note is printed on the cover page of the patent specification to alert the public that information submitted after the application was filed is not included in the specification (see point 5.4.016).

5.4.022You can make amendments to the European patent application in one of the following ways: 

(b) by annotating a copy of the relevant page(s) of the application. This is the preferred method if the amendments are not too extensive, as it simplifies checking. The amendments must be typewritten. Amendments should preferably be identified using functions available in a text editor to clearly indicate deletions and insertions in the amended text. Pages with such indications should be submitted in addition to clean copies. If you are asked to identify the amendments and indicate the basis for them under Rule 137(4), the handwritten form is appropriate, provided that clean copies are free from handwritten amendments.