The changes to the EPC (also known as EPC2000) were agreed by Contracting States in the year 2000 and came into force in the current Contracting States on December 13, 2007.

Among the last countries to deposit their instruments of ratification were France and Italy (respectively on December 5 and December 6, 2007).

New acceding members, including Norway (NO) and Croatia (HR) (both joining on January 1, 2008), will also adopt EPC2000.

One of the most fundamental changes in the EPC2000 is that a large number of provisions are moved from the Convention into the Implementing Regulations, which results in the fact that they can be amended by the EPO Administrative Board without the need of a Diplomatic Conference.

Among the major substantive amendments, the following have to be noticed: (i) the rewording of Art.54(3) on novelty and European prior rights: patent applications that were filed before an application but published on or after the filing date of the considered patent application are comprised in the state of the art without any restriction (the paragraph limiting the state of the art for novelty considerations to patent applications designating the SAME Contracting States as the later application has been deleted) and (ii) the confirmation in Art. 54(5) that "specific" second or subsequent uses in medical methods are patentable (use-limited product protection) for which protection was previously aimed at by "Swiss-type" claims.

Finally, a number of new opportunities for applicants are now available such as (i) Filing a patent application in any language wherein the provision of a translation into an EPO official language is deferred for up to 2 months; (ii) Claiming priority from an application from a WTO member state; (iii) Correcting some mistakes in the application or regain dates when deadline are missed under certain restrictions, (iv) Limiting or even revoking their patent through a centralized Europe-wide procedure, (v) Seeking judicial review of the Board of appeal.

New Implementing Regulations,  new Rules of Fees and new Examination Guidelines are accompanying the new version of the EPC.