Beware misleading mails from scammers
The EPO has become aware that malicious emails have been sent to European patent attorneys purporting to be from the EPO, containing unsolicited attachments or including links to third party domains. The EPO does not send out such emails. The latest known phishing attempt alleges that the recipient's smart card to access EPO services has expired, but future phishing attempts could be made in relation to other EPO services or e.g. fees.
If you suspect that an email that appears to come from the EPO might be a phishing attempt, please contact our customer support to verify the authenticity of the email by phone. Do not click on any links in such an email or open any attached documents until you are sure the EPO indeed sent that email to you.
The following are indicators that an email is probably a phishing attempt:
- The sender address is not epo.org (but rather a slight variant e.g. epo.com)
- The email contains links to third party web pages, but not to epo.org
- The email contains attachments you did not request