“Useful choice” clauses are, these days, something of a peculiarity of our local patent drafting. They are a particular type of object clause, usually phrased as an alternative after all of the other, substantive, object clauses in the general form “or at the very least provide the public with a useful choice”.
The EPO recently announced that it is conducting a survey regarding the EPO’s narrow and strict patent novelty grace period provisions amongst randomly selected European Patent applicants as well as consulting with user and stakeholder organisations.