Under the current rules of the European Patent Office (EPO), any communication issued by the EPO is deemed to be notified 10 days after the date appearing therein. This means that any time limit set from the notification of a communication (for example, the time limit for replying to an examination report) is in fact triggered 10 days after the date of the communication.
As part of the EPO’s digital transformation project, this rule no longer applies since 1 November 2023.
Documents issued on or after this date are therefore assumed to be notified on the date they bear, and the time limits will be defined by the expiry of a period of time set from the actual date of communication.
No need to say that we naturally take this into account when monitoring your deadlines.
