2.4 Amendments made by the EPO at the request of a party 

Where necessary, deficient documents may also be amended at the request of a party by the competent department of the EPO. This could be the procedure for minor amendments, e.g. where it is necessary to insert details which were omitted in the request for grant, and the number of amendments involved is reasonable, or where whole pages or paragraphs are to be deleted. The party concerned is advised to submit a list summarising the amendments to be undertaken by the EPO. It is, however, at the discretion of the examining division to decide whether the number of changes requested is in fact unreasonable and would take a considerable amount of time to deal with. If so, the examining division will require that the party makes the amendments and submits amended pages. This procedure could also be followed for minor amendments to drawings, e.g. for amending a reference number or deleting one or more whole figures (as regards the removal of references following an amendment to the description, see F‑II, 4.8). In the case of complicated amendments to drawings, where it is not immediately clear how the changes are to be made, the party concerned, who as a rule is the applicant or proprietor, must submit replacement pages.