The European Patent Convention (EPC) gives an applicant the possibility of dividing a pending European application by filing one or more divisional applications, which can be divided further.
The European application can be a European direct application (EP application) or a European part of an International application (Euro-PCT application). The divisional applications take over the effective date of the earlier application or earliest application in a line of divisional applications.
Divisional applications may be of interest as they give the applicant a possibility of protecting those parts of the invention disclosed in the application as filed, including non-searched subject matter, specific embodiments not covered by the scope of claims of the parent application, and claims that have to be removed from the parent application due to lack of unity.
To target a patent application against an infringing party, it is also possible to reduce the scope of the claims of the parent patent application, which it is hoped will lead to a faster-granted patent covering the potentially infringing product. A divisional application can be filed maintaining claims with broader scope of protection.
The rest of this article is locked for subscribers only. Please login to continue reading.
If you don't have a login, you will need to purchase a subscription to gain access to this article, including all our online content. Please use this link and follow the steps.
For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription to us that we can add you to for FREE, please email Atif Choudhury at achoudhury@worldipreview.com
Divisionals, prior art, EPC, EPO, EP application
