EPO Opens Representative Associations to Legal Practitioners from October

Release Time：2025-08-08 11:06Author：Views：88

As of 1 October 2025, legal practitioners will be permitted to join associations of representatives within the European Patent Office (EPO), ensuring equal treatment with professional representatives. Professional representatives are attorneys who have passed the European Qualifying Examination, while legal practitioners refer to lawyers in EPC contracting states authorized to handle patent matters domestically.

Currently, representation in EPO proceedings may be provided by three entities: professional representatives registered with the EPO, associations of representatives, or legal practitioners. Members of duly registered associations automatically gain representation rights without individual case-by-case authorization. Such associations currently represent applicants in over 600,000 proceedings. Legal practitioners may now enjoy equivalent convenience by joining existing associations or establishing new ones registered with the EPO.

This reform removes previous legal barriers that prohibited legal practitioners from forming or joining associations. Historically, their requirement to file individual authorizations for each case conflicted with association membership rules. With the recent abolition of this requirement as a simplification measure, legal practitioners may freely create or join EPO-registered associations alongside professional representatives or peers from 1 October.

As a milestone in the EPO’s simplification and digitalization efforts under its Strategic Plan 2028, the online service MyEPO now offers a self-service function for creating and managing associations.

Source: EPO Website

Previous：USPTO Eliminates Email Verification for Agency System Access, Mandates Multifactor Authentication

Next：Guidelines for Handling Rapid Examination of Trademark Registration Applications

Return to List