Are there any exceptions or exclusions to the RP programme?
Partner offices reuse EPO work products to the maximum extent practicable under their applicable national/regional legal framework. Since the RP does not require the partner countries to align their legal framework with the European Patent Convention, current differences in the respective patent laws and examination practices will continue to exist and reuse may therefore not be applicable and/or practicable in certain areas of legal and/or procedural divergence. This means in practice that in some cases patent applications may be treated differently by certain partner offices and that the patent examination process may lead to different outcomes.
Furthermore, even in areas where there is no substantive or procedural divergence between the legal frameworks, partner offices may in some cases decide not to fully reuse available work products, for instance, because they have discovered additional prior art, wish to reuse other citations instead or simply have a different opinion on the application at hand.
Finally, in some cases the reuse of EPO work products by a particular partner office can be limited in scope and duration by the EPO and partner office agreeing to first undertake a pilot project on RP.