Article 31

EUROPEAN PATENT OFFICE

Information from the EPO

Notice from the European Patent Office dated 13 March 2020 concerning improved online file inspection in the European Patent Register of documents cited in opposition proceedings

To further enhance its European Patent Register service by facilitating the inspection of documents cited during opposition proceedings, the EPO has made the following improvements to the electronic files available there for online inspection free of charge.

The EPO now assigns a reference number (e.g. D1) to any patent or non-patent literature cited by the parties during opposition proceedings. A consolidated list showing all these citations together with their assigned reference numbers will be added to the file in the Register.

Moreover, to facilitate the retrieval of the citations, the EPO labels them as such in the Register file, including a number at the end that corresponds to the assigned reference number, e.g. "citation in opposition procedure − 001" for "D1".

This improved service applies to all files where a first opposition is filed on or after 1 July 2019.

For more details, please watch the webinar on "European Patent Register improvements" available at epo.org/pi-videos.