MUNICH - The European Patent Office (EPO) announced in a press release a change in its practice, abolishing page fees for sequence listings (in PDF) complying with former WIPO Standard ST.25 that are filed as part of divisional applications in order to ensure compliance with Article 76 (1) EPC. This practice is recommended in those cases where the parent application contains an ST.25 sequence listing as part of the description and where applicants fear to add or lose subject matter when converting the ST.25 sequence listing into one of ST.26. The new WIPO standard, ST.26, applies to all applications that are filed on or after July 1, 2022.

This change in EPO practice follows a request of the user community. So far, only ST.26 compliant sequence listings were exempted from the page fee calculation (per OJ EPO 2021, A97).

The parent application’s ST.25 sequence listings additionally filed or contained in the certified copy under Rule 40(3) EPC, will be excluded from the calculation of the page fee. A notice with detailed information is published today in the EPO’s Official Journal. Our corresponding FAQs have been revised and completed with examples addressing specific issues that may arise from conversion from ST.25 to ST.26. This new practice will also be reflected in the next edition of the Guidelines for Examination, to be published on March 1, 2024.