Pages 524-543

INFORMATION FROM THE EPO

Notice from the European Patent Office dated 25 July 1996 concerning the revised Request for Grant form

A revised Request for Grant form1 will be introduced on 1 October 1996 to take into account the changes to Rule 28 EPC2 which will come into effect on this date (see sections 26 to 30b).

The following changes have also been incorporated:

• Inclusion of the new contracting state of Finland3 in sections 33 and 33a
• Inclusion of the new extension state of Albania4 in section 34
• Removal of section 38 relating to the filing of separate claims for Austria, Greece and Spain, as the reservations under Article 167(2)(a) EPC expired some years ago, and hardly any divisional applications based on earlier applications with separate claims are now filed; section A.3 on the preprinted Receipt for documents has therefore also been removed.
• Reintroduction of section A.7 (formerly A.8) (filing of a translation of the priority document) in the Receipt for documents (page 6) because, although under the revised version of Rule 38(4) EPC the translation of the priority document is not requested by the EPO until later, the applicant is at liberty to file the translation with the application if he so wishes.

It is recommended that applicants use the revised form, although copies of the previous version5 may be used up.

The revised form and amended Notes are reproduced below.

For technical reasons, the forms embedded in this article are only available in the PDF version.