5.5 Non-prejudicial disclosures 

Disclosures of the invention are disregarded if they happened less than six months before the European patent application was filed (see G 3/98 and G 2/99) and if they were due either to an evident abuse in relation to the applicant or the legal predecessor or due to display at an official, or officially recognised, international exhibition. Nevertheless, the search division does cite in the search report any documents it has reason to believe fall within one of the categories mentioned in B‑X, 9.2.8. For these documents too, the relevant date for the search will be the filing date of the application (see B‑VI, 5.1 and B‑XI, 4). Since abuse will generally only be asserted after the search report and search opinion (if applicable ‒ see B‑XI, 7) have been sent, and disclosure at an exhibition involves the question whether the displayed invention and the claimed invention are identical, both matters will be investigated by the examining division.