< Back to latest news & events

HGF Presents

Providing Enabling Disclosure for AI inventions at the EPO

September 2025

 

Video overview:

The equivalent to the enablement requirement in the US at the EPO is Sufficiency. There is an increasing trend for the sufficiency of AI related patent applications to be challenged at the EPO. This is important to bear in mind when first drafting a patent application, because it cannot be resolved by later amendment or addition to the application.

The core invention of AI-related patent application often lies in the practical implementation to solve a real-world problem. It’s therefore not uncommon for AI inventions to be claimed as a “black box” and this can cause problems at the EPO. There is a growing body of appeal cases at the EPO Boards of Appeal which have ended with refusal of an AI-related patent application for sufficiency.

The EPO Guidelines have been updated and appear to be more lenient than the body of appeal cases suggests. Our advice based on this is to describe at least one embodiment in enough detail which would enable a skilled person to build, train and implement the machine learning aspect of an invention.

Latest updates

Event - 29th September 2025

HGF are Bronze Sponsors of the LES Pan-European Conference 2025

We are proud to be a bronze sponsor of the LES Pan-European Conference 2025, taking place on the 29-30th September 2025 at The Hague Marriott Hotel, The Netherlands. This year’s …

Event details
Event - 26th September 2025

INTA’s 2025 Trademark Administrators and Practitioners (TMAP) Meeting

Adjoa Anim, Trade Mark Director at HGF, will be a featured speaker at the 2025 Trademark Administrators and Practitioners (TMAP) Meeting, taking place September 28–30, 2025, in Berlin, Germany. Adjoa …

Event details
Event - 23rd September 2025

Upcoming Webinar: Strategies for engaging with the EPO and JPO to get the Examiner on your side

Date: 20th October 2025 Time: 4.30 PM EDT | 1.30 PM PDT HGF and SHIGA are hosting an exclusive webinar exploring effective strategies for engaging with patent examiners at the European Patent …

Event details

Fashionably IP Podcast – Episodes 41-50 – exploring hot topics in the world of fashion and intellectual property

Episodes 41-50 of the Fashionably IP Podcast where we will be looking at important hot topics in the world of fashion and intellectual property. We will be focusing on key …

Read article

Agritech Thymes: A review of protection for gene edited plants

As we head into a new season, it’s a good time to revisit the current status of protection for Essentially Derived Varieties (EDVs) and plants derived from New Genomic Techniques …

Read article

Avoiding Legal Pitfalls: The Notting Hill Bag Company's Costly Mistake

[2025] EWHC 1793 (IPEC) – Natasha Courtenay-Smith and Notting Hill Bag Company Limited v The Notting Hill Shopping Bag Company Limited, Nangialai Takanai, The Notting Hill Shopper Bag Ltd, Ehsanullah …

Read article
Event - 12th September 2025

Wolters Kluwer Breakfast Panel on AI & IP at AIPPI

Sofie McPherson, Patent Director at HGF, will be moderating a special breakfast panel session hosted by Wolters Kluwer at the AIPPI World Congress in Yokohama on 15 September 2025. Session …

Event details

T1465/23 – No Narrowing by Description—EPO Board Terminates Inventive Step Analysis for Arbitrary Modifications Citing G1/24 and G1/19

“The potential patentability of a specific narrow embodiment…cannot render a claim allowable which, due to its breadth, encompasses a multitude of other, non-inventive embodiments” – r. 3.5. Background EP3113515 was …

Read article