Patent Knowledge Snippets

A new version of the European Patent Register was released at the end of February. Among the improvements, you can now find supplementary protection certificate (SPC) information in the Unitary Patent Register. See the release notes for more information (link below). 

SPCs are intellectual property rights which extend the period of effective protection for patents on human or veterinary medicaments and plant protection products. They are granted to compensate the patent owner for the time it takes to obtain regulatory approval from the authorities.  

For more information on SPCs, see the Unitary Patent Register Help files and our Patent Knowledge News article on SPCs (link below).  

Keywords: European Patent Register, Unitary Patent Register, SPC

We're launching a new version of the Publication Server at the beginning of April. You can try a preview at European Publication Server. 

The new version 

• only supports version 1.2 of the legacy REST API. If you're still using the SOAP API or version 1.0 or 1.1 of the REST API, please upgrade before the launch 
• means that the REST API will no longer require user-agent registration 
• contains no major changes to the user interface – the main difference is that the search form and the result list appear together 

For enquiries, Contact us at epo.org/support and tell us that you are contacting us about the European Publication Server. 

Keywords: European Publication Server, webservice, REST