The Eurasian Patent Office has approved the Guidelines on Patent Search (Guidelines).

This is a significant advancement in the Eurasian patent system. The Guidelines promote transparency in the process and aim to improve the quality of the application examination. As a result, it supports innovative companies and inventors seeking to protect their developments.

Patent search is one of the main stages in the Eurasian procedure for patenting inventions. The principal objective is to discover prior art relevant for determining whether the claimed invention satisfies the criteria of novelty and inventive step.

The Guidelines comprise general rules. They are based on the norms of the Patent Regulations under the Eurasian Patent Convention and the Rules for Drafting, Filing and Examining Eurasian Patent Applications. It also complies with the requirements of the WIPO Standards, the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the PCT International Search and International Preliminary Examination Guidelines.