3. Date of payment

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Where an amount is paid into or transferred to a bank account held by the Office, 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 (Art. 7(1) RFees, formerly Art. 8(1) RFees 1973). 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).

Payment via the EPO's credit card fee payment service is deemed to have been made on the date on which the transaction is approved (see OJ 2017, A72 and OJ 2017, A73).

3.1. Fiction of fee payment in due time – ten-day fail-safe arrangement

New decisions

J 10/20: If the European Patent Office issues a promise or statement on how to act in a given area, the principle of legitimate expectations requires that promise or statement to be honoured unless there is good reason not to do so. Users and representatives cannot be expected to question, without any apparent reason, statements on the extension of time limits which are made in publications under Rule 134(4) EPC. Even in the absence of a general dislocation in the delivery or transmission of mail, they can rely on such publications without suffering any disadvantages (points 1.12.-1.20 of the Reasons).