Report of the EPO Finances Committee

There has been little action in the Committee given the postponement of any fee increases to 2026.

There are only two items to report:

Amendment of the Arrangements for Deposit Accounts

By a decision of 12^th February 2025 amendments of the ADA were made to:-

1. Permit debit orders to be submitted via the EPO Contingency Upload Service in the event of “a system outage, regardless of its origin, provided that it occurs on the last day to pay the relevant fee and the user provides evidence demonstrating that it prevented them from submitting the debit order in an electronically processable format.”

   This is a welcome change, and thanks are due to John Gray and OCC for their persistent lobbying for this safeguard.

2. Amendments to automatic debiting were introduced to permit users to select different types of automatic debit, namely:

   • automatic debit order for all fees (as previously applied)
   • automatic debit order for all fees except renewal fees
   • automatic debit order for renewal fees only.

   This has been a longstanding request from users, and it will be interesting to see how much use is made of these possibilities.

Various tidying amendments were also made. The amended ADA came into force 1^st April.

See OJ EPO 2025, A17 and A18 for further details.

Unitary patent system

To some extent the system has been a major success, to such an extent that more resource is required to handle volumes than had originally been anticipated. As the cost of that resource is covered by the participating Member States’ share of renewal fees, this is cost neutral to the office.

The internal cost attributable to the UP as a proportion of fees collected on behalf of the Member States is declining.

Digitalisation and potential for fee changes

Comments on fees have been supplied to EPPC who are leading epi’s response to the EPO’s proposals for digitalisation. There are several simplifications that could simplify the system, reduce error, and result in a smoother procedure. These include abolition of the designation fee and simplification of the rules relating to further processing and reinstatement to permit a single fee to cover multiple acts.

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