Laurence Lai

From 1 April 2024, the European Patent Office will increase most official fees by around 4%. The first two renewal fees, in respect of the third and fourth years, will also see significant rises of…

The flurry of opt-outs during the sunrise period of the Unified Patent Court was partly driven out of concern of potential central revocation actions being filed as soon as the Court opened. As it…

As of the end of June 2023, 535,152 patents and applications have been opted-out of the jurisdiction of the Unified Patent Court. The effective number of opt-outs is already being reduced by…

At 09:00 CET on 1 March 2023, the three month sunrise period for the Unified Patent Court began. Whilst it is still early days, insights can already be gleaned from opt out requests and UPC…

Update 03/02/2022: The preview has been re-published and the links to it in this article are live again. Update 02/02/2022: The original press release regarding the advance preview of the Guidelines…

Last year, the European Patent Office changed the publication schedule of the Guidelines as part of its Strategic Plan 2023 which meant there was no update to the Guidelines in 2020. The changed…

The new Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA), which came into force on 1 January 2020, will be a cornerstone in helping the EPO’s Boards of Appeal meet their objectives of settling 90%…

The EPO’s biennial fee increases come into force on 1 April 2020 and include a 20% hike of the appeal fee. At the same time, new appeal fee refund provisions are being introduced through an amendment…

The European Patent Office has today published an advance preview of its annual update to the Guidelines for Examination which will come into force on 1 November 2019. This year, there have been some…