Chapter I – Introduction

Apart from the requirements of novelty, inventive step and industrial application, and the exclusion of subject-matter for which the ISA and/or IPEA is not required to carry out search and international preliminary examination, an international application must also satisfy a number of other requirements which are checked by the EPO as ISA and/or IPEA and reported on in the written opinion and/or IPER, as appropriate. These include substantive requirements such as sufficiency of disclosure (Art. 5), clarity of the claims (Art. 6) and unity of invention (Rule 13) as well as formal requirements such as the numbering of the claims (Rule 6.1) and the form of the drawings (Rule 11.10 to 11.13). These requirements are dealt with in the present Part F.

Part F also deals with the requirements relating to the right to priority.