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VI.F.3. Date of payment
Where an amount is paid into or transferred to a bank account held by the Office, under Art. 7(1) RFees (formerly Art. 8(1) RFees) the date on which the amount of the payment or transfer is actually entered in its account is considered to be the date on which the payment has been made to the Office. Thus, where an appeal fee was mistakenly transferred to a bank account held by the German Patent Office (GPO), neither the date on which the transfer was entered in the GPO's account nor the date on which the order to transfer the amount to the GPO was issued could be taken into account to establish whether a fee due to the EPO had been paid in due time (see T 45/94 and T 1130/98). The boards pointed out that, in the Administrative Agreement between the German Patent Office and the EPO concerning procedure on receipt of documents and payments dated 29.6.1981, as amended on 13 October 1989 (OJ 1991, 187), there were no provisions regarding the passing on of the payment or notification of the EPO for erroneous bank transfers. Sums of money payable to the EPO and paid into one of the accounts held by the German Patent Office were, under the terms of the Administrative Agreement, repaid to the payer (J 49/92). On the other hand, according to Art. 1(5) of the Administrative Agreement, payments sent by post to the GPO were accepted on behalf of the EPO and set aside for daily collection by an EPO employee.
Similarly, the use of a private courier to deliver a cheque (which did not arrive until after expiry of the relevant time limit), could not be considered as equivalent to the use of the postal services. The courier in question was not recognised as a delivery service equivalent to the postal service until later, by a decision of the President of the EPO dated 11 December 1998 (OJ 1999, 45) and this provision could not have retroactive effect (J 13/98). (Payment by cheque has not been accepted since 1.4.2008 - see also 2.1.)
Under Art. 7(3) RFees, the period for payment of a fee is considered to have been observed even if payment is not received until after expiry of the period in which it should have been made, on condition that certain requirements are met (see T 842/90 for an application of this under the then applicable Art. 8(3) RFees).