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This year’s first update of our EPC.App reference book to legal status of 1st April 2025 is completed. As always, the English and German versions are synchronized in content. The meanwhile 14^th edition of our EPC commentary includes all Official Journal articles until March 2025 with thereby implied changes of EPC provisions and is intended to be used when starting preparations for EQE 2026.

Key changes since the last update in November 2024 were:

1. The new EPO Guidelines valid as of 01 April 2025. Interesting amendments therein provide more clarity
   • to accelerated processing of oppositions in case of parallel infringement or revocation actions, for which periods have been shortened in view of the speed of UPC proceedings (GL E-VIII, 5 – open in EPC.App at A. 99)
   • that double patenting is considered no ground for opposition (GL D-III, 5 at A. 100)
   • that R. 56a EPC cannot be used for correction of claims filed after the date of filing (GL A-II, 6.1 at A. 90)
   • to claiming refunds in Central Fee Payment without the need for a separate refund code (GL A-X, 10.3 at A. 1 Rfees)
   • that sequence listings can also be filed in XML using the EPO Contingency Upload Service (GL A-IV, 5 at A. 78)
   • to the EPO criteria for allowability for corrections under R. 139 1^st sentence in line with G 1/12 (GL H-VI, 2.2 at A. 123)
2. Rules 36, 39 and 160 have been amended as of 16 December 2024 according to an EU sanction against Russia. With the changed provisions, the designations of EU states shall be deemed withdrawn for new EP applications in which one of the applicants is from Russia (see for direct EP applications R. 39 at A. 79; for divisional applications R. 36 at A. 76, for Euro-PCT Applications R. 160 at A. 153). Correspondingly, also no patents with unitary effect shall be registered for such persons (OJ 2024, A 70 at A. 142).
3. The EPC Implementing regulations in general have been adopted to more gender-neutral language as of 01 April 2025. To this end, minor changes of terminology have been introduced to the English version of 50 EPC Rules, whereas in the German and French version only the skilled person has been renamed in Rule 31 and a clarifying preamble has been added (see e.g. R. 31 at A. 78). The EPO just published the entire new set of Implementing regulations (OJ 2025, A16) together with a declaration that these create no difference in substance, however without identifying which particular rules have been amended. We confirm changes reflected in the update of our book to Rules 2, 4, 12a, 12b, 12d, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 28, 31, 32, 33, 55, 58, 59, 69, 70, 70a, 70b, 71, 77, 78, 79, 84, 95, 101, 102, 108, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 130, 134, 137, 141, 142, 143, 144, 153, 154, 161 and 163 EPC. While the use of gender-neutral language is of course justified and welcome, the current amendments created significant work for us EPC.App editors 😅 to automatically transfer all markings and inline comments of authors and users, while retaining their correct positions within the legal text from before the update.
4. The Arrangements for deposit accounts and their annexes have been updated as of 01 April 2025. The changes to ADA introduce new forms, exceptions and refund instructions. Most significantly, the Arrangements for the automatic debiting procedure (AAD) now distinguish between three types of automatic debit orders: for all fees, for all fees except renewal fees, and for renewal fees only. In contrast to previous years, the EPO did not publish any consolidated version of the ADA and AAD regulations. We therefore created our own consolidated versions, including the amendments published in OJ 2024, A81 and OJ 2025, A17 (in EPC.App at A. 5 Rfees).
5. As part of modernizing processes at the EPO, older services have been discontinued. Namely web-form filing as means of filing and smartcards as means of authentication have been abolished as of 01 January 2025 (OJ 2024, A88 at A. 75). And as new services available since February 2025, the list of professional representatives has been turned into a searchable database (OJ 2024, A107 at A. 134) and certified copies of EP priority documents in electronic format can be requested free of charge via MyEPO (OJ 2025, A3 at A. 88)
6. The new referral G 2/24 has been accepted by the Enlarged Board of Appeal (T 1286/23 at A. 105). It shall clarify whether, after withdrawal of all appeals, the proceedings may be continued with a third party who intervened during the appeal proceedings. – In addition to this case, the integrated case law database of the online EPC.App has been complemented by all BoA decisions published until end of March 2025. Further decisions thereof can be added or cited in personal annotations as needed using the self-editing functions (illustrated in this video).
7. As of 01 April 2025, validation of EP patents in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic has become possible (OJ 2025, A23 at A. 3)
8. A PPH pilot program with MOIC (Bahrain) has been started as of 1 March 2025  (OJ 2025, A19 at A. 94)

The above links to the online versions of the book can be followed when being logged-in. A free one month test account is available (does not extend automatically after expiry).

Feedback from EQE users has been reviewed and further included in the current update. Like in earlier years, we also tested ourselves the current EQE 2025 with the version of EPC.App available before the exam. We believe it was possible to find sufficient guidance to all EPC questions of foundation paper F and main exam paper D. Of course, it is always recommended to further enhance the author comments by own annotations for best results.

As usual, all changes of the update are automatically included in the online version on the next login. And as part of our update service, changes are additionally indicated by about 36 brief blue update notes in the App as shown on the screen in the image above and further explained in the FAQs. Of course, self-edited user content from before the update is retained in the respective personal storage on the webserver, and can be exported into the printable PDF offline version so as to avoid time-consuming transfer of handwritten annotations to the new edition. A 2-minute video illustrating the update process and related functions can also be found in our youtube channel.

To further avoid the need of replacing pages in a folder, a customized color paperback with up-to-date content and typed user comments can be ordered via our integrated high-quality print-on-demand service (see image above).

Update: For those who still prefer to start with a classical printed book, we published also the EPC.App April 2025 Edition as stand-alone black-and-white paperback. The book is available in English and German via Amazon.