"Article 52. PATENTABLE INVENTIONS" in the European Patent Convention

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Aug 15, 2025

We are in the process of making a reliable or more accessible copy of the rules meant to govern the EPO before they were routinely violated by Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos.

The European Patent Convention (EPC) is nearly 52 years old. Almost all the people who wrote and who signed it are dead already.

As an associate notes: "The reason it wasn't a bad idea at the time was that the scope was sensible."

Here's Article 52:

Article 52. PATENTABLE INVENTIONS

        (1) European patents shall be granted for any inventions which
        are susceptible of industrial application, which are new and
        which involve an inventive step.


        (2) The following in particular shall not be regarded as
        inventions within the meaning of paragraph 1 :
         (a) discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods;
         (b) aesthetic creations;
         (c) schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts,
             playing games or doing business, and programs for computers;
         (d) presentations of information.

The emphasis was added by us. So "that scope limitation was there from the inception," the associate notes.

Some time tomorrow we'll have a complete local copy of the EPC. We've had a PDF on the site for about a decade already, but we want something more accessible than that. █