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Report of the Online Communication Committee

J. Gray (GB), Chair

A new Session

epi’s Online Communications Committee has met for the first time in it its 2023-2026 composition. I am pleased to serve again as Chair, and to have David Brophy continue as Deputy Chair. Associate member Ulrich Harbach has agreed to act informally as Secretary. Thanks to these and to all the OCC members who will again put in a lot of time on behalf of the members and parties.

On 11 October 2023 the (former) OCC had its annual meeting with EPO IT and legal experts. This enables us to give the updates below. Members of have remained busy in various pilots, ‘working groups’, ‘focus groups’ and ‘round tables’, and reporting issues with new systems, some of which are discussed below. Support for ongoing improvement of UPC Case Management System continues in collaboration with Litigation Committee and UPC Registrar and IT experts. OCC members also joined the TOSC(Technical and Operational Support Committee of the EPO Admin Council – EPO and national office experts cooperation) meeting on 7-8 November as epi observers. I have also provided input to consideration of the digitalisation law changes that will be discussed in SACEPO Working Party on Rules on 26 October 2023.

EPO’s IT Roadmap 2023-2024 (See previous issue)

Of great importance for all epi members is the EPO’s roadmap for various IT developments. An updated version is in the Annex. The coming changes, and require planning & training by users, for transition to new systems.

  • Firms and users need to switch to the new authentication methods NOW as smart cards will no longer be issued from 1 Jan 2024. More detail below.
  • Firms and users should familiarise themselves with the new Contingency Upload Service as Fax filing and Web Form Filing will be closed later in 2024. More detail below.

These closures begin to take effect from 1 January 2024. More detail is given below.

MyEPO Services – new functions and pilot features

MyEPO Portfolio has added major functionality for pilot groups and for general use since C94, with more due for release on 1 November 2023. For example “self-service” changes can now be made in representation and bibliographic data. Eventually, features of OLF 2.0 and Central Fee Payment will be integrated. However, OCC members have encountered many bugs and omissions in these functions, and continue to bring these to the attention of EPO.

Recent new functions include:

  • Two-factor authentication (2FA) is now very successfully established as a flexible alternative to the smart card for MyEPO Portfolio, OLF 2.0 and Central Fee Payment).

    • See advice below

  • Requests for change of representation by “self-service”. A problem is that the old representative loses access to a case without knowing whether the change to a new representative is safely logged. Notification to the old representative should be mandatory and automatic (See also EPPC reports from SACEPO-WPR.)

  • Improved integration with Central Fee Payment: payment with deposit account in a single step with e.g. approval of text is now provided. (Hooray!)

The latest pilot group session in October heard about further developments to be trialled with pilot users in Pilot Phase 3:

  • A first API to download MyEPO mailbox communications automatically exists in pilot. Future projects: Error handling; APIs for OLF2.0; endpoints for signature and sending. APIs will be fully backwards compatible to eOLF. A sub-group of pilot users has been formed, which includes IT providers who make the popular IP management systems. A problem is that OCC/epi has no visibility of this collaboration, and IT developers talking only to IT developers is not always a good recipe for user-centred solutions…

    • Question for members: Is your PMS provider involved in the pilots?

  • Retrofitting 2FA to eOLF will be implemented before the year end. (See below)

  • Portfolio access administered by company administrators is being trialled.

  • Opposition cases will be visible in the portfolio.

  • Interaction with examiners, including with editing of shared documents.

As previously advised, firm administrators and management need to pay attention to the updating of records of associations, access to unpublished cases, Mailbox, smart cards etc.. Even if you don’t use MyEPO Portfolio day-to-day, use it to review such permissions. Permissions may change unexpectedly when new administrator features are released.

UP and UPC IT infrastructure

OCC continues to support LitCom in submissions to the UPC Preparatory Committee concerning the UPC CMS, critical for managing Opt-out procedures (see also LitCom reports).

Online Filing

Online Filing 2.0 has settled down and seems quite popular among its users. The opposition form 2300 has been available for some time. A Notice of Appeal form EP3002E is now available in Demo mode, and should be fully live by the time of C96.

  • Your Administrator needs to give you rights to draft, sign and/or send each different form in production and/or demo mode.

Alternatives to smartcards – !! MAKE THE CHANGE !!

No new smart cards will be issued after the end of 2023. The new MyEPO platform and OLF2.0 are already using the new two-factor authentication (“2FA”) platform. The “legacy” online filing system eOLF has been updated to use the new 2FA, at least for EPO procedures. Users can even use their smart card in parallel while they get used to the new authentication system for the time being.

Take action NOW to avoid being locked out:

  • Smart card users should register NOW with the new 2FA system. (Where are your smart cards & PINs? When do they expire?)

  • Firms/departments need policies NOW as to which modes of 2FA are acceptable. Who can use (i) company devices and (ii) private devices. Setting up more than one second factor is a good precaution.

  • Do you use eOLF to file at EPO? Update NOW to version 5.15 and try out the new way to sign and send submissions.

  • Do you use eOLF to file at a national office? Your national office will need to update their eOLF setup, before 2FA can be used for national procedures. As far as we know, no national office has done this yet.

  • Do you use EPO smart cards to access other national office systems? Is your national IPO ready with an alternative authentication method? It seems that several offices are not ready. EPO has announced that replacement smart cards may exceptionally be issued to renew existing users of such systems, but no new users will be accommodated.

More information on 2FA is at https://www.epo.org/en/applying/myepo-services/get-access. More information on phasing out smart cards is at https://www.epo.org/en/service-support/faq/myepo-services/phasing-out-use-smart-cards-2024 and in the OJEPO article, November 2023 edition.

Contingency Upload Service (CUS)

The EPO now provides an alternative to fax filing for “rescue”/emergency filings. Users and firms should familiarise themselvesAnd bookmark the web page https://www.epo.org/en/applying/myepo-services/file-with-us/cus with CUS in good time before incoming fax lines are abolished (scheduled mid-2024). The service is excellent in its implementation BUT OCC is vexed that this system has been conceived for a very limited set of circumstances, and legal certainty is undermined. My report to the Board on this is provided at Annex 3, which was endorsed at B127. Briefly:

  • What happens if the IT emergency is at the user side? Or if you just don’t know if it’s at your side or theirs?

  • What is the solution for last minute fee payments when EPO systems are inaccessible?

  • What is the solution when proper PDF generators are unavailable and you need to establish a filing date with highly informal materials, e.g. a Word file, photos/scans of a paper document, etc. etc..

  • What is the solution for a foreign or unrepresented applicant who knows nothing of the EPO formal requirements?

As a matter of principle, OCC has always argued that imposing formal requirements before a person can establish a filing date is contrary to fundamental principles of the EPC and international treaties. Any common file format should be acceptable, of course at the risk of the person filing.

EPO has promised clear guidance, but through SACEPO-WPR and direct contact we are seeking assurance that legal basis is provided for flexibility. Technical implementation to improve flexibility can only proceed when the legal certainty is in place.

‘Front Office’ for national patent filings

12-13 countries use/plan to implement national filing systems based on the new “Front Office” platform, after the proof of concepts by Lithuania and Spain. Other countries with ongoing/agreed implementations include: Greece, Macedonia, Finland, Netherlands, Iceland, Belgium, Luxemburg. Larger countries (e.g. DE, FR, GB) will be providing their own alternative. epi members will want to ensure their own national offices have Front Office or some other service established as soon as possible. We have been assured that eOLF is safe until the end of 2024, at least, but the pressure will come to turn it off soon enough.

Other systems

Various other IT systems are up for discussion. Improvements have been requested in the Third Party Observations (TPO) form and Register Alert.

We are pleased to see a wider range of digital signatures on assignments are proposed in the recent in proposals presented to SACEPO-WPR.

With EPPC colleagues in SACEPO-WPR we strongly resist rule changes to restrict TPO to 100% online-only.

Last notes

Thanks as always to the members outside of OCC who report to us the random issues they face with EPO IT systems. You can submit issues and information directly to the OCC Chair at OCC@patentepi.org.

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