Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Cristina Lopes Margarido European Patent Office Mathieu de Rooij ZBM Patents & Trademarks
Overview
Relevant articles of EPC for determining prior art Relevant articles of EPC for determining a right to priority Usual pitfalls when claiming priority and how to avoid them. Enlarged Board of Appeal decision G2/98 regarding having more than one priority date for a single claim Examples of self-collision by priority application and by divisional application Interesting litigation (Novartis v. Johnson & Johnson; Nestec v. Dualit) Conflicting Board of Appeal decisions Advice on how to avoid self-collision and use it against others
Filing date 01.09.2011 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
time
Article 54(3)
time
For assessing novelty, EP1 is part of the state of the art! EP1 must be regular publication
P documents
application
priority date
filing date
E documents
application
priority date D1 filing date D1 filing date (no priority claimed) D1 priority date filing date
filing date
publication date
publication date
publication date
Article 54(3)
yes
yes
yes
no
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Effect of priority
Article 89 EPC The right of priority shall have the effect that the date of priority shall count as the date of filing of the European patent application for the purposes of Article 54, paragraphs 2 and 3, and Article 60, paragraph 2.
If two or more persons have made an invention independently of each other, the right to a European patent therefor shall belong to the person whose European patent application has the earliest date of filing, provided that this first application has been published.
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Priority
State C
State D
**
12
months
* Entitled to use the priority date as the first filing date ** NOT entitled to use the priority date as the first filing date
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