2 days to go until EPO's 10-day rule disappears!

Last year the European Patent Office decided to abolish its long-standing "10-day rule" as part of its digital transformation of the patenting process. Helpfully, the EPO gave more than a year for users to prepare for the changes. Almost a year later and the date the rules change is nearly upon us: 1 November 2023. Users should now ensure that they are ready for the changes, and that any updates to their deadline-monitoring systems are ready to be deployed when the time comes.

The new rules will apply to EPO letters dated 1 November 2023 onwards. For letters dated before that, the old rules will apply. The new rules will also apply to letters delivered by post or electronically.

Let's quickly review the position before and after the changes.

CURRENT POSITION: The EPO's 10-day rule, which is being abolished, applies when the EPO sends a letter to the applicant (typically with objections that need to be overcome). In the letter a period for responding is specified from "notification" of the letter. The 10-day rule means that the letter is considered delivered 10 days after the date on the letter, and the deadline is calculated from there. The rule was originally introduced to take account of the time the letter might spend in the post. 

FUTURE POSITION: Once the rule is abolished, there will be no extra days added to the response period, in most cases. The letter will be considered delivered on the date on the letter, and the deadline will be calculated from there. However, there will be some safeguards for cases where the letter is received a) particularly late or b) not received at all. For case a), the safeguard is best understood from the following graphic which compares the position before and after the changes:

For case b), where a letter is not received at all, there will be no change in practice, and the EPO will send a new letter with a new date, as it currently does.

You can read more on the abolition of the 10-day rule in this article by my colleague Gareth Williams.