Citing Prior Art: New EPO Rule 141

New Rule 141 was added by Administrative Council decision CA/D 18/09 of October 28, 2009. It comes into effect on January 1, 2011.

Details of its implementation have been published in the OJ EPO at: http://archive.epo.org/epo/pubs/oj010/08_10/08_4100.pdf

According to this new rule, the applicant will have to provide any search report or official action indicating the results of a search provided
by an “office of first filing”, this being the office in which the priority-founding application was filed. Copies of the official
documents listing the art, but no translations will be required. A list prepared by tha applicant will not be acceptable. It will not be
necessary to provide copies of the art and the EPO is working on making arrangements with some other patent office for the required information
to be supplied automatically. If no such search results are available at the time of filing or regional phase entry, they will have to be
supplied once they become available. The obligation continues for as long as the application is pending.

Rule 70b gives the EPO the right to call for any such search reports if they have not been supplied and to dismiss the application as being
“withdrawn” if the requested information is not supplied within a non-extensible two month term.