UPC temporarily restricts functions CMS to the benefit of opting out

The Unified Patent Court has temporarily restricted non-essential functions of the CMS, in its endeavour to ensure that users who want to file opt-outs can do so within the Sunrise period.

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‘In view of the approaching end of the Sunrise period, we are striving to ensure that all those who want to file opt-outs can do so, and this still within the Sunrise period.

To maximize the capacity of our system to accept incoming requests, we have decided to restrict certain non-essential functions of the CMS, which pertain to retrieval of information by external users.

In particular, we have temporarily discontinued all public APIs, including APIs allowing external users to retrieve a list of opt-out cases linked to a patent number, or the list of representatives in the system.

Be sure that we are closely monitoring the performance of the CMS to ensure we will be able to handle all opt-outs before the end of the Sunrise, whether they are filed via API or via CMS front end.’

In an earlier message, the court wrote that in order to prepare and secure the CMS version of Entry Into Force:

‘The UPC will run a sequence of key IT tasks that will have an impact on the external users. Below are those activities:

1. CMS CERUS(Pre-production environment):as of the 26/05, 9AM CET, the CMS CERUS environmentused for the Sunrise practice will be offline until the 29/05, 9AM CET, the CERUS environment will be upgraded to be available with EIF functionalities. The APIs will be unavailable and all other CMS connected functionalities will be off during this period.
2. CMS CERUS(Pre-production environment):as of 29/05, 9AM CET, external users will be able to start the passive practice of EIF functionalities. The Court will not provide support nor process any cases on this environment.
3. CMS(Production environment):as of 31/05, 9AM CET, the CMS production will be offline until the 01/06, 9AM CET: the CMS environment will be upgraded with EIF functionalities. This means that APIs will be unavailable and queues will be stopped(it will no longer be possible to perform massive opt-outs via API as of 31/05, 9AM CET. The ongoing opt-outs will be stored and the processing of them will resume as of 1st of June at 9AM CET. Logging of “new” opt-outs will be possible again from 01/06, 9AM CET.

We suggest that the “last” massive batch of opt-outs, prior to the EIF launch date, is sent for the 30/05 at 4PM CET. As a reminder, please do not use the CERUS test environment if you wish to effectively start an EIF procedure.’