No 10-days rule any more at the EPO as of November 1, 2023
The 10-days rule stipulating that documents sent by the European Patent Office (EPO) were deemed to have been received 10 days after the date of the document, is not applicable any longer : all documents issued by the EPO on or after November 1st, 2023 are deemed to occur on the date of the document.
For applicants, the end of the 10-day rule will slightly shorten the term for responding to EPO communication since the deadline is now calculated from the date of the communication.
It also results in a welcome standardization, since the deadline calculation in the EPC procedure correspond therefore now to the already established practice in the PCT procedure.
As before, the burden of proof for receipt lies with the EPO.
If the Office cannot prove that a document has been received, the document in question will be reissued and considered as received on the new date.
In the event that a document is exceptionally received late, a safeguard is introduced: if the notification is contested, and the EPO cannot prove that a document reached the recipient within seven days from the date it bears, a deadline triggered by the fictional notification of that document will be extended by the number of days exceeding those seven days.
For further information and calculation examples, see the notice from EPO and the schematic friezes below.
