Pages 564-585

INFORMATION FROM THE EPO

Notice dated 16 November 2001 concerning revised Form 1200

At the start of January 2002 a revised Form 12001 (entry into the European phase) will be issued.

The revised form and amended Notes are reproduced below.

Applicants are advised to use the new form for international applications entering the European phase from 2 January 2002 onwards.

Applicants may continue using the current version of the form (03.002) without prejudice to their rights.

However, the previous version (04.993) is valid only for international applications filed before 1 July 1999 and thus may be used only until the end of January 2002, as that is the latest possible time for the 31-month time limit for European phase entry to expire for such applications.

In the new Form 1200 the wording of the request for no communications to be issued in connection with the applicant's declaration indicating the intention to pay designation fees has been modified to reflect the new legal situation arising from the amendment of Rules 108 and 85a EPC4. If a form which has the old wording in Section 10.2 is filed, the EPO will treat this as a request not to issue communications under Rule 108(3) EPC in respect of the contracting states in question. In addition, the footnotes to Sections 10.1 and 10.2 now include Turkey5, which has acceded to the EPC since the current version of the form was issued. Finally, in Sections 6 (Documents intended for proceedings before the EPO) and 7 (Translations) the requirement to file the listed documents in triplicate has been dispensed with because, following the implementation of the PHOENIX electronic file system, it is now only necessary to file a single copy of each6.

The amended Notes reflect the above changes and also the amendment to Rule 107 EPC7, which provides for a uniform time limit of 31 months for entry into the European phase as from 2 January 2002.

For technical reasons, the forms embedded in this article are only available in the PDF version.