1. Under the current EPC system, letters from the EPO are deemed to be delivered to the addressee on the tenth day following its handover to the postal service provider.

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The EPO will conduct additional searches to determine earlier national rights and further determine their prima facie relevance starting September 1, 2022. The EPO already carries out a search for prior European patent applications, which are filed before, and published after, the filing date of a European patent application in question. Such earlier European patent applications are relevant for novelty in the sense of Art. 54(3) EPC. As of September 1, 2022, the EPO will further conduct systematic searches to further identify prior national rights and assess their prima facie relevance free of charge. An earlier national right is

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Montenegro accomplished the final step towards acceding to the European Patent Convention on July 15, 2022, and will thus become the 39th member state of the European Patent Organisation from October 1st, 2022. 1. Until now, Montenegro had the status of Extension State and it was thus possible to extend to Montenegro the protection conferred by the European patent applications or patents by paying the corresponding extension fee within six months of the date on which the European Patent Bulletin mentions the publication of the European search report, or, where applicable, within the period for performing the acts required

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Despite the pandemic filings of European patent applications increased again. 188 600 patent applications were received by European Patent Office (EPO) in 2021, which is an increase of 4.5% in comparison to the previous year. This is the highest number of applications ever filed in one year. The EPO's Patent Index 2021 shows that patent filings rebounded significantly last year after a slight dip in 2020 (-0.6%). In general the number of patent applications is seen as an early indicator of how the budgets of research and development investments of companies worldwide evolve.  Source website of EPO For applications in 2021 the

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The Committee on WIPO Standards (CWS) adopted new WIPO Standard ST.26, which represents nucleotide and amino acid sequences listings in XML, replacing WIPO Standard ST.25. The representation of sequence listings in XML format rather than TXT format intends to improve access to international sequence databases. The new standard further harmonizes sequence listing practice among patent offices and requires mandatory annotation of additional sequence types (nucleotide analogues, D-amino acids, branched sequences), so that more sequence data will be searchable. The filing date (not the priority date) is the reference date that determines if the new ST.26 rules apply. Refiling a

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By order of June 23, 2021, the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) rejected two applications for preliminary injunction against the Act of Approval that was adopted on December 18, 2020, for the purposes of ratifying the Agreement of 19 February 2013 on a Unified Patent Court (UPC Act of Approval). This decision was highly expected because the process of ratification of the UPC Act of Approval and thus, the establishment of the UPC has been delayed until the ruling of the Court. The violation of fundamental rights alleged by the plaintiffs is considered by the FFC insufficiently asserted and

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Unitary Patent a unique protection for 17 states in Europe With the recent ratification of Austria, the European Patent with unitary effect (“Unitary Patent”) will be introduced soon. This title enables to get a patent protection by many European states. Presently 17 states have ratified the agreement and will participate with the Unitary Patent, namely Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, see https://www.epo.org/law-practice/unitary/unitary-patent.html. The Council Regulation No 1257/2012 (hereafter “Unitary Patent Regulation”) sets out the details of the unitary patent. In particular it states that only a European patents having the

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The European Council has just indicated on its website that the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (also called PAP) has entered into force yesterday, January 19, 2022. This follows the deposition of the ratification instruments of said protocol by Austria, which was effective January 18, 2022, making the PAP being ratified by its thirteenth member state. As explained in a previous post, the PAP ratification triggers the existence of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) as an international organization, which is a historic landmark in the field of European IP, after so many

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The EPO’s Rules relating to Fees have been amended by decision of the Administrative Council of 15 December 2021. The amended version of the Rules relating to Fees is applicable as from 1 April 2022. An evaluation of the fee adjustments indicates a general increase of about 2.5% for most fees. Raised fees concern in particular the fees for: - Filing fee (EP regional phase) : 130 EUR (increased by 5 EUR), - Filing fee (direct EP application) : 130 EURO (increased by 5 EUR), - Search fee : 1390 EUR (increased by 40 EUR), - Designation fee: 630 EUR (increased by 20 EUR),

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The European Patent with unitary effect (“Unified Patent”) will be introduced soon. The final stage of the preparatory work will be accomplished by the end of this summer and the final missing ratification will then be deposited by Germany. In order to give applicants the possibility to obtain Unitary patent protection for EP applications that are scheduled for grant between the deposit of the final ratification and the entering into effect of the Unified Patent, the EPO announced the following measure for deferring grant. For applications for which a notification under Rule 71(3)EPC has been issued, the applicant may

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Artificial intelligence system called DABUS cannot be named as inventor according to Decisions J 8/20 and J 9/20 of the Board of Appeal of the EPO Legal background Article 81 EPC stipulates that the European patent application shall designate the inventor. Article 60 defines that the right to a European patent shall belong to the inventor or his successor in title. Rule 19(1) EPC defines that the request for grant of a European patent shall contain the designation of the inventor. Present case An applicant has filed two patent applications in which an artificial intelligence system called DABUS was

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The Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) once again initiated a benchmarking survey and let users vote among the world's five largest patent offices for the quality of its patents and services. Again, the EPO has topped the survey this year in both categories like it has ever since this annual survey was started by IAM in 2010. The survey’s results showed that 26 % of the participants rate patents of the EPO as "excellent". This is in increase from 23% last year and places the EPO well ahead of the other IP5 offices. The respondents also agreed that the EPO

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