The EPO’s long-standing practice of requiring adaptation of the description to align with the claims has been under dispute in recent years. The EPO and most board of appeal decisions have quoted Article 84, second sentence, of the European Patent Convention (EPC) as the legal basis for this requirement; that is, the claims must be supported by the description. However, a few board of appeal decisions have held that Article 84 of the EPC only imposes a one-way requirement on the claims vis-à-vis the description.
In its decision G 1/25 (Hydroponics) on September 3 2026, the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) shed light on the adaptation requirement.
Applying the principles of T 439/22 and G 1/24, the EBA held that claim interpretation must generally integrate reading of the description and any drawings in a unitary process. The EBA found that this claim interpretation can, in some cases, bring to light inconsistencies between the claims and the description, where the inconsistencies leave the skilled person in real doubt as to the meaning of the claims, thus leading to non-compliance with one or more EPC provisions. Such inconsistencies can only be removed by amendment of the claims, the description, and/or the drawings. The need to amend arises only if the inconsistencies have legal significance by leading to non-compliance with an EPC requirement: Article 84 does not require formal concordance between the description and claims.
In decisions T 657/24 and T 384/25, G 1/25 has been followed. The boards in both cases found no need for description amendments and found that non-claimed subject matter in the description did not create an inconsistency of legal significance.
To conclude, G 1/25 appears to call for less extensive requirements for description adaptations and it is expected that the next update of the Guidelines for Examination in the European Patent Office will reflect the more relaxed approach laid down in the decision.
