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Office action

If we find an obstacle to the registration of your design, we will inform you about it by sending you an office action as a registered letter.

In general, we only send one office action, but we can send more if needed.

In the office action we may also ask you to correct certain formal deficiencies, for example to provide a missing additional fee or power of attorney.

What is the deadline for responding to an office action?

You must respond to an office action concerning a design registration within two months from the date when the office action was issued. It is very important that you respond to the office action within the given time. If you fail to submit your response by the deadline, we will dismiss your application and end the registration process.

Dismissal and one chance of reinstatement

If you fail to respond by the deadline and receive a decision of dismissal, you can ask us to reinstate your application. You can request reinstatement only once per application. We charge a separate fee for the reinstatement. See our price list and payment instructions.

If you fail to respond to the office action after your application has been reinstated, and we dismiss the application for a second time, the application will not be processed at all and the designs will not be registered.

Can I get a deadline extension?

We can extend the two-month response time for you if you request it within the time limit given in the office action. The request can be informal but it must be in writing.

After each office action, you can get one extension without any explanations. To get another extension, you must provide a specific explanation.

We grant a summer extension without any explanations to every office action having a response deadline between 1 June and 31 August. You can therefore be granted more than one summer extension.

How should I respond to an office action?

You must respond to office actions in writing, for instance by email.

We recommend that you study our examples of how to respond to office actions and how to overcome the obstacles reported in them. See the examples.


Printable version Latest update 27.03.2020