No more faxing to the EPO as of 1 July 2024 :(
Hidden in a News message on MyEPO services, the EPO announced that from July onwards, the EPO will no longer accept submissions by fax. All fax services relating to EP and PCT as well as Unitary Patent procedures will thus cease completely as of July.
Already since 1 March 2023, EPO no longer sends faxes in proceedings under the EPC and the PCT - but at that time still continued to receive them; see OJ 2023, A15.
As of 1 July 2024, the EPO will also stop receiving faxes; see the News message.
The EPO indicated that, in emergency cases, the Contingency Upload Service is available via the EPO website (CUR here). Note that Webform Filing will be decommissioned in December 2024.
A Decision from the President and a Notice from the EPO on the abandoning of fax are expected to be published in OJ EPO April 2024.
For the News message: see here
What to do now (or rather as of 1 July), if you are still using fax?
ReplyDeleteWhen it concerns the filing of an application, EP Or PCT, you can still use fax with national offices that allow so. It does not need to be your own national office (unless your national law requires so): you can file an EP in principle with any national office of EPC contracting states (with a few exceptions) and most also act as to to for your PCT (do not mind too much about language requirements of PCT Rule 12.1: if language not accepted, the appl is transmitted to the IB and you keep the date of receipt by the “wrong” rO as filing date pursuant PCT Rule 19.4)
However, this does not work for filing a divisional application, nor for any response to any EPO communication or for an opposition or appeal: those all need to be filed directly with the EPO. So, do not wait for the last day (although in many situations there are good reasons to wait for the last day of the term), prepare and be ready to use CUS (or until December 2024, Webform filing), and prepare to use Online Filing 2.0 as your mail tool: since that allows 2FA and textstring signature, no smartcard is needed and it is more intuitive than good old OLF.
Or… if too late to still use normal post (or registered mail): take your bike and cycle to the EPO to hand it over to the porter!
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