As reported here, there is a pending EPO Enlarged Board referral on entitlement to priority.
Last week, the EPO President submitted extensive comments on the questions referred.
The questions are as follows:
- Does the EPC confer jurisdiction on the EPO to determine whether a party validly claims to be a successor in title as referred to in Article 87(1)(b) EPC?
- If question I is answered in the affirmative
Can a party B validly rely on the priority right claimed in a PCT-application for the purpose of claiming priority rights under Article 87(1) EPC
in the case where
- a PCT-application designates party A as applicant for the US only and party B as applicant for other designated States, including regional European patent protection and
- the PCT-application claims priority from an earlier patent application that designates party A as the applicant and
- the priority claimed in the PCT-application is in compliance with Article 4 of the Paris Convention?
The EPO President concluded that both questions should be answered in the affirmative i.e. the EPO has competence to verify priority entitlement, and that the “PCT joint applicants approach” is warranted.
The EPO announcement can be found here
The comments of the EPO President can be found here
