The Unified Patent Court has published an update on the problems with the CMS and the opting out of patents of the jurisdiction of the court before the starting date of 1 June 2023.
On its website, the UPC writes:
‘Dear users of the UPC Case Management System,
As you may have experienced, the CMS has recently faced performance issues due to a high number of instructions to the database. This is in particular when filing opt-outs via the user interface, as well as when using APIs (public and private).
We have taken or envisaged to take the following actions to guarantee appropriate performance of the key Sunrise functionalities of the CMS.
A first batch of improvements have been performed over the week-end of 13 May 2023.
Other actions are being implemented:
1. Increase of the infrastructure capacities (effective as of 17/05).
2. Request sent to important API users to limit their request only to the necessary ones.
3. Clearing of the stagnant statuses in the queue backlog (effective soon).
4. Limit the number of requests from public APIs.
5. Investigate other performance improvements and implement them.
Other actions are under consideration:
6. Close requests from public APIs if necessary.
7. Limit access to private APIs to restrict requests to only critical ones.
8. Second batch of increase of infrastructure capacities.
For the benefits of the overall community, we will appreciate if you can limit the usage of APIs as much as you can by avoiding multiple requests of statuses and receipts. In particular take some time before requesting the status of the opt-out and/or the PDF receipt. We would to remind you that the PDF’ receipts will always be available at any given point in time.
Be sure that we are closely monitoring the performance and processing of the CMS and working hard to ensure we will be able to handle all opt-out before the end of the Sunrise. As you know, the possibility to opt-out a patent will remain possible after the end of the Sunrise and at least for the first seven years of the UPCA entry into force.’
Entry info Force version CMS
Today, the court also published a report with practical information on the Entry Into Force (EIF) version of the CMS, which will be launched on the first of June. Due to the launch, some parts of the CMS will be offline in the last days of May.
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According to a publication in Lexology on 17.05.2023, opt-outs have now exceeded 100,000 patents, with many more expected in the coming weeks.
This is to compare with the 50 000 foreseen in the budget planning. Each opt-out costs the UPC 2€.
Let’s hope the CMS will cope.