EP post-grant publications and UP procedures

See how post-grant publications for documents for which a unitary effect was requested are shown in EPO tools

A year after the launch of the Unitary Patent system we have been collecting data on the various new procedural scenarios. This article shows how post-grant publications for documents for which the Unitary Patent procedure has been requested are displayed in various EPO patent information tools. 

Post-grant publications can occur after opposition or limitation procedures. If a European patent is maintained in an amended form after opposition, the new European patent specification containing the description, the claims and the drawings is published in its amended form as a B2 document. Under the limitation procedure, proprietors can request the limitation of their granted patents. After an EPO decision to limit the patent, the amended specification is published as a B3 document. There are also two types of corrections: the correction of the title page is published as a B8 publication, and the correction of the patent specification is published as a B9 document.  

Fig. 1: Number of B2/B3 and B8/B9 publications by publication year  

The basic time limit for filing a request for unitary effect is one month after publication of the mention of the grant of the European patent in the European Patent Bulletin. According to the EPO's Unitary Patent dashboard, around 28 000 patents have unitary effect registered. This represents an uptake rate of around 24 per cent. The rejection rate for requests for unitary effect is around 0.1 per cent. We can expect 2 to 4 per cent of patents with unitary effect to have post-grant publications. The first specification amended after the limitation procedure (B3) of a patent with unitary effect was published on 12 June 2024, i.e. in week 2024/24. The first correction of a title page (B8) for a patent with unitary effect was published on 12 July 2023, week 2023/28. The first correction of a specification (B9) of a patent with unitary effect was published on 2 August 2023, week 2023/31.  

EPO patent information tools display information on post-grant publications of documents for which Unitary Patent protection has been requested slightly differently.  

In the European Patent Bulletin, the new Section IV has been designed for the publication of Unitary Patent procedure legal events. For patents with unitary effect, all new B2/B3 publications and new B8/B9 corrections are listed in both the EP part of the Bulletin and in Section IV.7 of the new part of the Bulletin. The post-grant publications that do not have unitary effect registered are listed only in the EP part of the Bulletin.  

Fig. 2: European Patent Bulletin announcement of the first B3 publication with unitary effect registered 

In the UP About this file view in the European Patent Register you can see all post-grant publications independently from the presence of the registration of the unitary effect. This view is activated the day after the receipt of the request for unitary effect. The post-grant publications are available in the Register four to five weeks in advance, and the documents are accessible via a link to the European Publication Server from 14.00 hrs on their day of publication. 

Fig. 3: Register entry of document with unitary effect requested and not yet registered, and with B8 publication mentioned in the Register and not yet published. 

The B2, B3, B8 and B9 PDF versions of the documents with unitary effect requested or registered that are published on the European Publication Server have no reference to the Unitary Patent procedure on their title page. However, in the XML file, within the bibliographic data, XML tags starting at B7000 contain Unitary Patent procedure-related information. For example, B7001 signifies the date of request for unitary effect. 

Fig. 4: Example of Unitary Patent data in the XML file of the downloaded ZIP file of the B9 publication with unitary effect registered. 

Keywords: Unitary patent, UP, Post-grant, Dashboard, EP Register, Publication Server