Changes to the registration of general authorisations take effect

The European Patent Office (EPO) offers enhanced MyEPO features to simplify authorisation management and will register general authorisations only where issued for employees of a party to proceedings.

New feature in MyEPO for employees of an entity that is a party to proceedings

MyEPO, the central part of the EPO’s suite of online services for the patent granting process is enhanced to provide a new feature for registering and managing general authorisations issued for employees of a party to proceedings. This digitalisation measure means a more streamlined and user-friendly experience and empowers users by giving them greater autonomy to register and update these general authorisations.

General authorisations now registered only for employees of an entity that is a party to proceedings

This change in the EPO’s practice comes as a result of recent simplification measures aimed at improving efficiency and user-friendliness.

Since professional representatives, legal practitioners and associations are normally exempt from filing general authorisations, the EPO has stopped registering and updating those issued for these representatives and it will no longer be possible to refer to the registration number of a previously registered general authorisation.

In exceptional cases where an authorisation is required – for instance when there has been a change of representative without the withdrawal of the previous representative or when there are doubts as to a representative's entitlement to act – the EPO will ask the new representative to file an authorisation (either individual or general) in the proceedings in question. This can be done easily and conveniently by submitting a signed electronic copy of the authorisation, using one of the EPO’s permitted online filing services.

For employees of an entity that is a party to proceedings, who are neither professional representatives nor legal practitioners, the EPO continues to register and update general authorisations under Article 133(3), first sentence, EPC since authorisations are still always required for this user group. Employees may either file an individual authorisation or refer to an already registered general authorisation in the proceedings in question. The registration numbers of general authorisations registered before 1 December 2025 will remain valid for employees who are neither professional representatives nor legal practitioners.