What are the limitations of the Contingency Upload Service?

As a contingency service expected to be used in cases of emergency, only very basic validations on the meta-data of your upload are performed. As a result, by making use of this service you will not benefit from the business validations and structured meta-data offered by the standard EPO online services and filing tools.

The uploaded documents are not automatically indexed, and subsequent processing will be required by the EPO for them to be incorporated into the file held by the EPO. Therefore, more lead time will be needed for the documents to be treated as part of the Patent Granting Process and become visible in MyEPO portfolio.