Trilateral Project 24.1-Biotechnology 205

Corrections in the description, claims and drawings of a European patent application may only be made within the limits of what a person skilled in the art would derive directly and unambiguously, using common general knowledge, and seen objectively and relative to the date of filing, from the whole of these documents as filed.

When reading the application at the filing date of the application, a person skilled in the art would not normally be in a position to recognize the incorrect information in a DNA/amino acid sequence using only his common general knowledge. Therefore, the correction of DNA/amino acid sequences which were not known before the filing date is normally not possible.

It should be noted that documents such as priority documents or the abstract of the application may not be used as a basis for amendments.

The corrections are not more likely to be permitted if transformants or vectors containing the gene were deposited.