Searching and retrieving Unitary Patent information

Focus on the European Patent Bulletin 

With the arrival of the Unitary Patent (UP) system more UP-related data is becoming visible and searchable in the EPO’s patent information services. In a series of articles entitled “Searching and retrieving Unitary Patent information”, we will showcase the different patent information tools and services to demonstrate how you can find and retrieve respective UP data. We start this series with a look at the European Patent Bulletin. 

In this article we inform you about the legal basis and the role of the European Patent Bulletin in the Unitary Patent (UP) proceedings and explain the data capture and publication of UP-related entries in the new Chapter IV of the European Patent Bulletin. 

According to Article 129(a) EPC, the European Patent Bulletin is a periodical official publication of the EPO containing particulars of the entries as specified by the European Patent Convention, Implementing Regulations, or as decided by the President of the European Patent Office. In the European Patent Bulletin the EPO publishes new records or changes in the bibliographic, legal status and procedural data of European patent applications, patent specifications and patents with a request for unitary effect. The European Patent Bulletin is published weekly on Wednesdays in digital form (PDF) in the EPO’s three official languages English, French and German. It is an authoritative source of EPO’s patent information. Many legal events only take legal effect after being published in the European Patent Bulletin.  

The launch of the Unitary Patent (UP) system on 1 June 2023 leads to new data which originate from the UP procedure. The publication and maintenance of the records and information originating from the UP procedure is one of the new tasks entrusted to the EPO by the member states participating in the UP system. 

The role of the European Patent Bulletin is specified by the Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection (UPR). According to Rule 17(1) UPR, the European Patent Bulletin contains a special part, Chapter IV, in which the legal events relating to the Unitary Patent procedure are published in combination with the corresponding bibliographic data. The first European Patent Bulletin containing Chapter IV was issue number 28 published on 12 July 2023. 

Since issue number 28, Introduction Part A also contains an overview of the new Chapter IV for the Unitary Patent, listing the types of information published in this chapter. Chapter IV consists of 12 sections. Sections 1 to 11 contain new entries of the UP proceedings, for example the date of request for unitary effect. Section IV.12 publishes corrected, changed or deleted entries within the UP proceedings, for example new UP proprietors after a transfer of rights. The sections in bold in the Introduction Part A are those having records published in the current European Patent Bulletin issue. 

Fig. 1: Example of the Introduction Part A in the European Patent Bulletin (issue number 28) 

The EPO has set up a special department, the so-called Unitary Patent Protection Division (UPP Division). Experts from the UPP Division deal with Unitary Patents and store new or changed UP records in the EPO’s databases. Every week new or changed legal events and changes in the bibliographic data originating from the EP and now also the UP procedure which occurred since the last publication run are processed. 

One of the products resulting from this so-called weekly publication run is the EPO Bibliographic Data file (EBD). The EBD is made available in WIPO ST.36 format. The EBD, which now comprises EP and UP records, is the main input for the European Patent Bulletin. The EBD can be downloaded from the EPO’s webpage free-of-charge. 

To create the European Patent Bulletin, the EBD file is converted into the human-readable PDF format that is published on the EPO website. It should be noted that not all records included in the EBD weekly file are published in the European Patent Bulletin. For example, proceedings before the UPC Unitary Patent Court (UPC), such as actions, decisions or appeals, the opt-out and withdrawal of the opt-out from the exclusive competence of the UPC, the renewal fees paid for the unitary effect years or the date of dispatch of the deemed lapse communication (situation preceding the final lapse) are all UP records included in the EBD file but not published in the European Patent Bulletin.  

Fig. 2: Product page for the European Patent Bulletin 

To ensure that users can easily and quickly access and read the information, the EPO follows the recommendations of several international standards when creating the European Patent Bulletin. Furthermore, the EPO’s legal divisions decided on various combinations of legal events and bibliographic data to be published in the European Patent Bulletin. For Chapter IV, the UPP Division decided in what combination and in what layout the records of the UP proceedings to be published under the UPR Rules are to be displayed in the European Patent Bulletin. 

The following is an example of an announcement of the registration of the unitary effect in section IV.2(1) of the European Patent Bulletin. According to the WIPO Standard ST.9 Recommendation Concerning Bibliographic Data on and Relating to Patents and SPCs, the entry indicated with number (11) shows the European publication number, the date of registration of unitary effect and the procedural language. As can be seen in Fig. 3, the so-called C0 marker earmarking European patents with unitary effect is also shown.  

Fig. 3: Announcement of the registration of the unitary effect in section IV.2(1) of the European Patent Bulletin 

The data exchange between the EPO and UPC will intensify in the future. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us via our contact form and indicate in the subject line that your question concerns the European Patent Bulletin. 

Keywords: Unitary Patent, European Patent Bulletin