G 1/03 and G 2/03 are two decisions of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO), which were both issued on April 8, 2004. The decisions, which are identical, relate to the allowability of introducing disclaimers during the prosecution of a European patent application or during opposition proceedings relating to a granted European patent. More precisely, they relate to whether and under which circumstances an amendment introducing a negative limitation to a claim is allowable, when neither the negative limitation nor the subject-matter excluded by it from the scope of the claim have a basis in the application as filed.

Decision

The Board ruled that introducing a disclaimer which has no basis in the application as filed may be allowable in order to: The Board however set out stringent criteria for their application (which have later led to many disclaimers being found inadmissible): Decisions G 1/03 and G 2/03 only apply to "undisclosed disclaimers", i.e. disclaimers which are not disclosed in the application as filed. The framework of these decisions is limited to "(originally) undisclosed disclaimers".

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