Due to the pandemic the world is currently facing, many IP offices have decided to extend the official deadlines. We are in permanent contact with INPI, EUIPO and WIPO as well as with our foreign colleagues to monitor the measures taken by each country’s offices.

We would particularly like to draw your attention on the following postponements:

• INPI: the deadlines provided for in the intellectual property code, with the exception of those resulting from international agreements or European texts, between March 12 and June 23, 2020, shall be extended to July 23, if the initial deadline was one month, or to August 23, if the initial deadline was two months or more.
• EUIPO: the extension of the deadlines before the EUIPO ended on 18 May 2020 for a normal resumption of activity from that date.
• WIPO: There are already measures for actions and extensions of deadlines in exceptional situations, including the closure of the national office. However, this is a case-by-case analysis and not a generalized postponement.

Other national offices have also introduced extensions of deadlines or facilities for requesting deadlines’s extensions. Please do not hesitate to contact us, if you wish to obtain information on a particular country, at contact-cpi@taoma-partners.fr.

In any case, most offices such as INPI, EUIPO or WIPO, continue to operate normally. As far as possible, it might be appropriate to continue processing files within the initial deadlines, in order to anticipate in particular an overload of the offices’ IT tools when activities resume