Special cases: European divisional application and application based on Article 61 EPC
Obtaining a European patent: the different filing options

Some applications can only be filed at the EPO. This is the case for the European divisional application ( article 76 de la CBE ). Such an application is generally filed when the "parent" application (the one on which the divisional application is based) does not meet the requirement of unity of invention ( article 82 de la CBE ), i.e. when the application covers several different inventions. In such cases, the EPC requires only one application per invention (or, more precisely, per...