Report of the Online Communications Committee
In February I joined epi delegate Manolis Samuelides in the PCT Working Group meeting at WIPO in Geneva. This body with representatives from the PCT states and PCT authorities advises the PCT Assembly on potential law changes. A number of provisions relating broadly to electronic filing and processing of applications were debated. We spoke on behalf of users to encourage improvement on the standard ST.26 and software relating to sequence listings. There was detailed discussion of proposed rules to strengthen the safeguards for users when entry into the national/regional phase is potentially allowed to be made online only at some offices. It was nice to hear some national offices actually speak up with an awareness of the diversity users’ situations.
Closer to home, several OCC members and other epi members participated in the SACEPO Working Party on the Electronic Patent Process (SACEPO-EPP) on 25 March 2025. To prepare for this, we had an online meeting of OCC, in which we were also joined by external guests who are the other European members of SACEPO-EPP. The EPO presented future developments on digital transformation and the plan for a ‘paperless patent granting process’. Despite being called the online communications committee, OCC sees no reason to close completely the right to file on paper. EPO is committed to preserve this at least for meeting certain time limits.
We also collaborated urgently with delegates to SACEPO-WPR (Working Party on Rules), to coordinate responses on the 3rd Basket legal changes for digital transformation. A major focus for OCC throughout the digital transformation project has been safeguarding against accidental loss of rights due to IT failures, especially on the last day of a deadline.
In very good news, one of our longstanding worries has recently been addressed by amendment of the Arrangements for Deposit AccountsSee https://patentepi.org/r/info-2502-25 - new ADA Point 7.1.4.. Where a system failure occurs on the last-day, a debit order can now be filed through the Contingency Upload Service, regardless of whether the fault is at the user side, the EPO side, or somewhere in between. This plugs a safety gap that was created years ago, when debit orders were allowed only through the official mechanisms Central Fee Payment, MyEPO, eOLF or OLF 2.0.
Members and filing staff: Please take a quiet moment to familiarise yourself with the Contingency Upload Service, just in case you need it one day!
Hopefully this new, fairer approach to IT failures will be carried forward in the 3rd Basket changes, mentioned above. The epi proposals include some final revisions of Rule 134 and RFees 7 which OCC considers desirable, to guarantee streamlined handling of IT-related failures, without difficult arguments about where the fault lies.
MyEPO Portfolio is now rebranded as simply “MyEPO”. The pilot group sessions continue monthly, with several OCC members and associates actively contributing and sharing thoughts with the EPO, and with numerous other EPAs and patent administrators who are active in these sessions. Details of EPO’s MyEPO services and latest IT Roadmap is available online at https://patentepi.org/r/info-2502-26.
EPO is now thankfully developing and refining more and more APIs for automated data exchange between user systems and the EPO systems. OCC has a dedicated and knowledgeable API Working Group, led by our acting Secretary, Ulrich Harbach. They are very active in testing and reporting issues, and requesting the next level of functionality. OCC continues to press for structured, machine-readable communications from the EPO system, just as we provide machine-readable input in return.
Don’t forget you can consult EPO’s dedicated Legal Interactive Platform for AI chat on the EPC, Guidelines and Case Law.
The Legal Interactive Platform seems to be performing well again. Compared with general tools like Chat GPT, this AI tool is trained exclusively on the EPC law sources, and can be a very effective way to access the guidance for specific situations, amid all the EPC statutes, Guidelines and case law. (Of course mistakes are possible, in obscure cases.)
The new Third Party Observations platform is available to pilot group user and offers both production and Demo modes. General release is scheduled for November.
Major developments scheduled for the end of 2025 are (i) DOCX filing as standard and (ii) colour in drawings. Colour in drawings should be live from 1 October 2025. DOCX filing is scheduled for Spring 2026. Different users will have different concerns and challenges, depending how they prepare specifications, and what kind of technology they are in. It will be good practice to include a PDF of what the document should look like.
Collaborative projects continue in progress. OCC members have been supporting LitCom in collaboration with the UPC IT team and other user bodies to improve the UPC CMS and we hope to see a demo of the UPC CMS replacement on 10 June 2025. OCC members will continue participation with EPO and NPO experts on new IT Cooperation Workshops for SP 2028, covering “Digital Toolkit”, API’s and interconnectivity, and Front Office (continued from SP 2023). OCC members have volunteered to participate in PCC working groups on use of AI tools and cloud computing. PEC/Learning have launched a forum for discussing IT matters relating to the electronic EQE - Wiseflow etc.. David Brophy joined the TOSC meeting in April and Ben Grau joined with Peter Thomsen in a joint epi-Business Europe delegation to the * IP5 Heads* meeting in Tianjin, China. IP5 and IP5 Industry working groups tackle many IT-related issues, such as Global ID for applicants, Global Dossier, harmonised signature requirements, drawings and so forth. The industry delegations are keen for work to focus on delivering results from the existing projects, before moving to add new ones.
OCC also assists the epi Presidium and Secretariat with ‘internal’ IT-related topics from time to time. The * Searchable List of Representatives* was launched smoothly, after a campaign of information to members. More recently we met EPO to hear about plans for publishing databases of Legal Practitioners and of Associations of EPAs. epi sees several serious objections to the proposals, and EPO was asked to reconsider. We will continue to speak with the EPO as opportunities arise. I will attend the main SACEPO meeting in July.
Thanks always are due to the OCC members and associates for their hard work and enthusiasm. Thanks to Susanne Ullmann for support in recent years and thanks to Sadia Liebig who now takes care of OCC after the recent reorganisation. Thanks also to the equally enthusiastic users who keep us informed of issues arising in their daily work.
Finally, a reminder that EPO Support team generally provide a very effective and immediate support for your IT issues. In case of difficulty or dissatisfaction, you can contact occ@patentepi.org.
