The self-editable commented European Patent Convention
- EPC.App is an annotated European Patent Convention (EPC) for both practitioners and trainees, which focuses on finding the most relevant information quickly, and is designed to work close to the law text.
- All articles, rules and protocols of the EPC as well as the Rules relating to Fees are fully reproduced. They are provided in extendable manner with abstracts from the Examination Guidelines, Official Journal articles and case law, as well as numerous authors' comments and cross-references. Depending on output settings and personal user annotations, the PDF-file makes up about 400 to 600 A4 pages (PDF-sample).
- The content is ordered according to the articles of the Convention, which are always started at the top of a page, and to which the rules of the Implementing Regulations are assigned. The display is in a two-column layout, for non-disrupted reading of the legal texts in the left column, as well as comments assigned to the individual paragraphs in the right column. Comments can also be found as short references within the legal texts, as well as below them in the form of more detailed summaries of the legal situation.
- Authors' comments are generally kept in a short style, reduced to the essentials, so as to avoid distraction by less important information and encourage users to add their gained knowledge in own words using the editing functions (see also video below). To this end, the authors further made a targeted selection of the contents instead of collecting all conceivable details.
- The texts are further provided with colored markings of important key terms, time limits, fees, languages, and legal consequences, which can be adjusted consistently throughout the book.
- EPC.App is available in English and German with same content (bilingual official legal texts; comments translated by authors themselves). The content will be updated twice per year to the current legal status (in April and November), while individual user annotations will be retained in contrast to a conventional book. See also update blog post on the current 13th edition with legal status of 01 November 2024.
- For all those who prefer to start with a classical book, a stand-alone printed version of the EPC.App with all authors' comments is available as paperback on Amazon (in the marketplaces DE, UK, FR, NL, IT, ES, SE, PL, US, CA, AU, JP). The current November 2024 edition comes in a convenient small format (25.4x17.8cm, 2.4 cm thick) and has 420 b/w pages. In the Amazon store, you can freely inspect the first few pages of the book by selecting “Look inside”. Our FAQs further include a brief comparison of paperback and electronic versions.
- Reviews: Review: using EPC.App for Paper D - EQE 2019 (Salted Patent Blog July 2019), A critical review: The EPC.App (epi Information August 2020), Study Materials Review: EPC.App and PCT.App (The Yellow Sheet November 2021).