Spotlight on Life Sciences Oppositions

Having advised thousands of clients on their EPO opposition strategies for many years, Mewburn Ellis is acutely aware that successful oppositions and appeals require not only deep technical expertise and knowledge of the subject matter under scrutiny, but a forensic understanding of the evolving procedural aspects of the EPO process and timeline. Mewburn Ellis has produced a new special report focussing on oppositions in the life sciences sector to provide our clients with forensic insight into the EPO opposition process.

Our research comes at an important juncture. The procedural changes introduced by the EPO in 2016 to streamline the opposition process have begun to take effect, producing tightened timeframes that, while welcome, require new strategies to navigate successfully. 

We published this report to help tackle the key questions our clients ask regularly. In spring 2019, we undertook 350 hours of research, analysing more than 5,000 opposition cases filed at the European Patent Office over the last ten years, studying the timelines for hundreds of oppositions both before and after the EPO’s opposition streamlining initiative. Our own proprietary data analysis tool, developed specifically for this research programme, enabled us to download and manipulate significant quantities of data, a task previously unmanageable when undertaken manually.