Deeds: no substantive pre-assessment when requested via email

We are increasingly receiving requests by e-mail to pre-assess whether we will accept a request for registration in the patent register. We have generally responded to these requests. 

However the Netherlands Patent Office has now decided to stop providing this service.

We will no longer provide this service because the assessment of the question via e-mail and the assessment of the request sent in later are often done by different staff members which can cause  confusion. The questions are also generally not the simplest ones and assessing them twice is unnecessarily time-consuming. Of course we will still endeavour to answer general questions by e-mail about documents to be submitted.

In concrete terms, this means that we will no longer answer a question by e-mail, if the question concerns a pre-assessment of documents that will be submitted later.

The document Leidraad inschrijvingen in het octrooiregister* describes which documents are required for a registration. If a request and the accompanying documents do not comply with the requirements, the request will generally be rejected. You can always still explain why you are not able to submit the required documents and why, in your opinion, the documents submitted could replace this information. After receiving your request, we will assess its content.

*This document is only available in Dutch