Enlarged Board of Appeal tackles entitlement to priority
It is certainly an exciting time at the EPO—barely two months have passed since the long awaited “plausibility” decision ( G 2/21), and the EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) has just held oral proceedings to help it decide on another highly anticipated referral—this time on legal entitlement to priority ( G 1/22 and G 2/22).
The EBA has been asked two questions, which can be summarised as follows:
1: Is the EPO competent to assess whether a party validly claims to be a successor in title?
2: Is the priority claim for a European application valid where a priority application is filed by A and the priority claiming PCT application names A as an applicant for the US only but B as an applicant for all other states (including Europe)?
No decision was announced during the oral proceedings, which lasted less than three hours, but the positions of the parties after the hearing can be summarised as follows:
