Your European Patent Office (EPO) smart card will expire soon. Read our September update on the actions you need to take.

September 2024 update

From 30 September 2024 you will no longer be able to renew eOLF Smart Cards that have expired. To continue filing with the IPO via eOLF, you will need to replace your smart card with a ‘soft certificate’. From 1st January 2025, valid smart cards will no longer be supported by the EPO.

What you need to do

You will need to go through these steps to continue using eOLF for UK patent filings:

  1. Request your soft certificate by emailing [email protected] from 1 October 2024. You will need to provide your name, organisation, email address and the expiry date of your smart card (if you have one already).
  2. Install the soft certificate provided on your device.
  3. Enrol your soft certificate on the How to file page of the IPO website.

We will provide further details on each of these steps once you have requested your soft certificate.

What you need to know

We will start accepting requests for soft certificates from 1 October 2024. This process should take 1-2 weeks, but the smart cards that need to be renewed most urgently and the customers who don’t have smart cards already will be prioritised.

Each individual user will need their own soft certificate and they cannot be requested in bulk. Before you apply for a soft certificate, you should make sure that you have the latest version of eOLF installed.

If your EPO smart card is due to expire before 30 September 2024, we would request that you renew your smart card as usual. Smart cards and soft certificates can be used in parallel until the end of the year.

If you have any queries, please email [email protected].

What are the future plans for eOLF?

In the first half of 2025, we will be rolling out our new ‘One IPO’ digital service, which
will replace eOLF. The new service will both allow you to apply for patents and manage your patents portfolio online. In 2026 the service will be extended to include trade marks, designs and IP tribunals.

We are committed to supporting eOLF until at least three months after our new ‘One
IPO’ service goes live. This means that eOLF will continue to be available well into 2025.

We will inform you of the precise date that eOLF will be disabled for UK patent applications well in advance of it happening.

A reminder of what’s happening

What is changing

When the IPO’s new patents service launches:

  • you will no longer be able to start new Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications with IPO UK via eOLF

  • new online PCT applications will have to be made via ePCT (the World
    Intellectual Property Office’s online filing service)

Three months after the new patent service launches:

  • eOLF will be disabled for all IPO UK filings

  • new GB patent applications will be made online via the new IPO UK digital service

What is not changing

  • you will still be able to make paper GB, PCT and European Patent (EP) applications directly with IPO UK

  • you will still be able to file EPs digitally through EPO’s online filing service – Online Filing 2.0. This can’t be used to file with IPO UK as the receiving office

  • you will be able to file patent applications in other countries via their national IP offices and World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)

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