European Patent Office

The search engine processes the comprehensive text of each decision of the EPO boards of appeal contained in the database (since 1979). The decisions are always available in the language of the proceedings (English, French or German). If a translation is available (some of the decision were published in the Official Journal in all three official languages), it can also be accessed.

To search enter words and phrases into the search field.

Search Board of appeal decisions

Search field (e.g. "T_1022/99")

Basic search tips

To search for case number, use the following syntax :
- for the Disciplinary Board of Appeal: "D_nnnn/yy"
- for the Enlarged Board of Appeal: "G_nnnn/yy"
- for the Legal Board of Appeal: "J_nnnn/yy"
- for the technical boards of appeal: "T_nnnn/yy"
- for the Examining and Opposition Divistion:"V_nnnn/yy"
- for decisions on protest cases: "W_nnnn/yy"
[advanced search examples]
Use * to truncate
- Examples: "T_1022/99" or "W_*/97" or "D_0012/97" or "G_*/8*"
Use Boolean operators AND, OR, NEAR
Phrases (if containing no parentheses) can be searched by entering them without apostrophes, e.g. inventive step
If you want to disable implicit stemming, use quotation marks, eg "remittal" will not display documents containing words such as "remitted" etc.
for more detailed information and/or questions, please consult the Help section

Results

The first level result is a list of links to documents matching your query.
Clicking on a document link will open the corresponding bibliographic data in a separate window. The bibliographic data file also contains the link to the full text of the corresponding decision.
The full text and images of the decision are available in mixed mode PDF. You need to have the freeware Acrobat Reader installed on your workstation.