European Union, Unitary Patent, UPC

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The Unified Patent Court has temporarily restricted non-essential functions of the CMS, in its endeavour to ensure that users who want to file opt-outs can do so within the Sunrise period.

In an announcement on its website, the court says:

‘In view of the approaching end of the Sunrise period, we are striving to ensure that all those who want to file opt-outs can do so, and this still within the Sunrise period.

To maximize the capacity of our system to accept incoming requests, we have decided to restrict certain non-essential functions of the CMS, which pertain to retrieval of information by external users.

In particular, we have temporarily discontinued all public APIs, including APIs allowing external users to retrieve a list of opt-out cases linked to a patent number, or the list of representatives in the system.

Be sure that we are closely monitoring the performance of the CMS to ensure we will be able to handle all opt-outs before the end of the Sunrise, whether they are filed via API or via CMS front end.’

In an earlier message, the court wrote that in order to prepare and secure the CMS version of Entry Into Force:

‘The UPC will run a sequence of key IT tasks that will have an impact on the external users. Below are those activities:

  1. CMS CERUS(Pre-production environment):as of the 26/05, 9AM CET, the CMS CERUS environmentused for the Sunrise practice will be offline until the 29/05, 9AM CET, the CERUS environment will be upgraded to be available with EIF functionalities. The APIs will be unavailable and all other CMS connected functionalities will be off during this period.
  2. CMS CERUS(Pre-production environment):as of 29/05, 9AM CET, external users will be able to start the passive practice of EIF functionalities. The Court will not provide support nor process any cases on this environment.
  3. CMS(Production environment):as of 31/05, 9AM CET, the CMS production will be offline until the 01/06, 9AM CET: the CMS environment will be upgraded with EIF functionalities. This means that APIs will be unavailable and queues will be stopped(it will no longer be possible to perform massive opt-outs via API as of 31/05, 9AM CET. The ongoing opt-outs will be stored and the processing of them will resume as of 1st of June at 9AM CET. Logging of “new” opt-outs will be possible again from 01/06, 9AM CET.

We suggest that the “last” massive batch of opt-outs, prior to the EIF launch date, is sent for the 30/05 at 4PM CET. As a reminder, please do not use the CERUS test environment if you wish to effectively start an EIF procedure.’


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6 comments

  1. I bet we will exceed 500.000 opt-outs, despite the “efforts” of the CMS

  2. My apologies to those wishing to file opt-outs for my unthinking act of interogating the system to determine what the current level was ( it was a touch below 200,000).

    1. Heh? The numbers being afforded to new opt-out applications are today approaching 300k.

      I know that some applications will have been created but not (yet) filed. The true number of applications that have been filed is therefore likely some way short of 300k.

      On the other hand, it seems highly likely that most applications will concern more than one patent / patent application. Indeed, some applications could concern hundreds of patent rights. What this means for the number of patents (and patent applications) that will have been opted out by the end of May is hard to say. However, I would be surprised if the total was less than 7 digits.

      Of course, the last-minute – and far from clear! – announcement of an early end to the sunrise period (9am CET on 31 May) will help to keep the numbers down a little. My guess is that there are more “tricks” left in the bag that can and will be used to pull adequate numbers of patents into the grasp of the UPC. Even if the ultimate outcome will be depressingly predictably, it will be interesting to see how all of this plays out once the UPC goes live.

  3. During a recent cnference in Dresden (May 5) they spoke about 60.000 until that moment.

    1. Thank you, but access to this correspondence requires to log on to the epi member area. Do you know if it can be found somewhere else?

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