Headnotes and Catchwords of EPO Board of Appeal Decisions

Headnotes and Catchwords of EPO Board of Appeal Decisions

Extracted from a bulk dataset released by the European Patent Office

✅ 4,989 headnotes and catchwords available in three languages: 2,506 in English, 1,029 in French, and 1.454 in German

✅ Includes headnotes from G-, J-, T-, D-, and W-decisions 

✅ Coverage: Decisions from 1979 onwards

✅ #OpenSource #OpenAccess – freely available for all

✅ Available in multiple formats: CSV, XLSX, DOCX, TXT, and MD

Source:

14.6 EPO Boards of Appeal Decisions - BoA decisions March 2025; https://publication-bdds.apps.epo.org/raw-data/products/public/product/21 (available as a bulk dataset for direct download)

GitHub: https://github.com/xi2pi/epo_decisions

Statistical Overview of Decision Types and Languages (Figures indicate the number of headnotes):

Decision Type
D
G
J
T
W

Language

DE
40
103
206
1052
47

EN
41
120
287
1993
44

FR
40
98
185
674
29

Note: R-decisions (just a small number of decisions) were not extracted to the docs - to be improved for v3.

Structure of references: D YY NNNN L T S 

Data

Value

D

Decision type

T        technical board of appeal

J        legal board of appeal

W       PCT protest case

D        disciplinary board of appeal

G       enlarged board of appeal

R        petitions for review under Art. 112a

YY

Case year

e.g. 90 for 1990, 04 for 2004

NNNN

Case number

e.g. 0005

L

Decision language

E        English

F        French

D        German

T

Decision publication type

U        unpublished (distributed, not distributed)

X        published in OJ

P        translated and published in OJ

S

Decision publication serial number

e.g. 1, 2, 3

Update based on version 1

adapted to March 2025 release

catchwords were included

X1 and U1 reference were included

duplicates were removed

sorted by year (starting with the earliest)

references were transformed into common case number, e.g. "G 1/15"