ADMINISTRATIVE COUNCIL
Decisions of the Administrative Council
Opening of additional fields of technology for substantive examination
At its fourth meeting the Administrative Council came to the decision set out below. This follows on from the decision of 19 December 1977 quoted in the Official Journal 2/1978, pages 77 to 79, and means that for applications filed in the period 1 June 1979 to 30 November 1979, substantive examination will be possible over approximately a further 20% of the areas of technology or over approximately 80% in toto. It also means that for applications filed on or after 1 December 1979 substantive examination will be possible over all areas. Thus from that date onward the EPO will be fully operational. The areas of technology included in the further 20% (as listed in Column 1 of the Annex to the decision below) have been chosen in such a way as to take account, so far as possible, of the wishes of industry, while at the same time maintaining a reasonable spread over the three main technical fields (Chemical, Electrical and Mechanical).