This Supplementary publication to the Official Journal "EPO Boards of Appeal Case Law" presents summaries of decisions of the boards issued in 2015 and 2016. The headnotes of the decisions published or scheduled for publication in the Official Journal of the EPO are set out in the annex.

Previous editions of the case law report included a first part on activities of the boards, along with relevant statistics. Please note that this information is now contained in the separate publication "Annual report of the Boards of Appeal of the European Patent Office", the 2016 edition of which was published as OJ Supplementary publication 3, 2017.

As always, the case law report aims to provide a readily accessible overview of the latest developments in the boards’ jurisprudence. It follows the established format of previous editions, with the case law arranged according to topic and short summaries of selected decisions for each. Of course no summary, however careful, can be a substitute for reading the decision itself. The full texts of all decisions included here can be accessed free of charge on the EPO website (www.epo.org).

I would particularly like to thank the members of our Legal Research Service for their valuable work in compiling the present report. My thanks also go to the EPO Language Service, without whose support simultaneous publication in all three official languages would not have been possible, and to all other EPO staff who have helped produce the present publication.

I hope that all who read the report will find it useful.

Carl Josefsson

President of the Boards of Appeal