1. Pursuant to Article 11(2) of the Agreement between the EPO and WIPO under the Patent cooperation treaty [ 1 ], Annex A, item (ii) of the agreement has been amended with effect from 1 January 2015. The text of Annex A as amended is published below.
Annex A
Languages and Kinds of Application
Under Article 3 of the Agreement, the Authority specifies:
(i) the following languages which it will accept:
English, French, German, and, where the receiving Office is the industrial property Office of Belgium or the Netherlands, Dutch;
(ii) the following kinds of application for which it will not act:
as an International Preliminary Examining Authority, international applications where the international search is to be, or has been, performed by an International Searching Authority other than the European Patent Office or the industrial property Office of a State party to the European Patent Convention.
2. As a result of this amendment, any national or resident of the United States of America filing an international application on or after 1 January 2015 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office or the International Bureau as receiving Office will be able to select the European Patent Office as International Searching Authority or International Preliminary Examination Authority irrespective of the technical field in which the application is classified. The Notice from the EPO dated 1 October 2007 concerning business methods remains applicable. [ 2 ]
3. Also as a result of this amendment, and with effect from 1 January 2015, Part 5 “Limitations” of the Notice from the EPO dated 24 March 2010 concerning the carrying out of Supplementary International Searches under the PCT (OJ EPO 2010, 316) shall read as follows: “The EPO will only accept a limited number of SIS requests per year. Since 2010, the EPO has limited the number of SIS requests it will accept to 700 per year.”
