News & Resources

February Bulletin: EPO, UK IPO, CTM & PCT practice news

EPO practice

• The 16^th edition of the EPO’s guide to national law in EPC states has been released and can be found here: http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/national-law.html

UK IPO practice

• The global patent prosecution highway mentioned in our last update is now in operation.  Four more offices have joined, namely Hungary, Iceland, Israel and Sweden, bringing the total number of participating offices to 17.
• In addition, the UK IPO has a bilateral patent prosecution highway program with the German patent office, which could speed up the grant process where protection is only required in the UK and Germany.  The program is explained here: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-types/pro-patent/p-law/p-accelerated/pro-p-pph/p-pph-dpma.htm

CTM practice

• An explanation of some of the recent changes to the OHIM guidelines is given in this month’s Alicante News: https://oami.europa.eu/tunnel-web/secure/webdav/guest/document_library/contentPdfs/about_ohim/alicante_news/alicantenewsdecember2013_en.pdf

PCT practice

• The filing fees for international applications at the EPO will change with the other EPO fees on 1 April 2014.  The new fees are here: http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/official-journal/2014/01/a5.html
• The PCT regulations will be amended with effect from 1 July 2014.  The changes are minor and relate to the international examining authority performing a top-up search for recent publications if necessary and file inspection being available after publication of the application.  The full text is here: http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/notifications/pct/treaty_pct_205-annex1.html