The aim of these articles is to keep our Clients and Associates updated about developments in the sector of Intellectual Property in general and our firm in particular. In this way, we wish to provide a broader view of the tools that the field of trade marks, domain names, patents, designs and related rights offers to entrepreneurs to enhance and protect their efforts in researching and developing new solutions and ideas.
EPO’s Revised PACE Programme
The PACE (Programme for Accelerated Prosecution of European Patent Applications) is a programme offered by the European Patent Office (EPO) designed to accelerate the prosecution of a European patent application, thereby enabling patent grant to be obtained within a shorter timeframe.
By requesting PACE, the EPO undertakes to expedite the examination phase of a patent application by issuing the next official communication within three months of the request for accelerated examination or from the start of the examination phase, and each subsequent official communication within three months of receipt of the response to the previous communication. This accelerated procedure makes it possible to significantly shorten the average time to grant, which might otherwise take several years.
By contrast, the accelerated procedure for the search phase, under which the EPO committed to issuing the Search Report within six months, will be discontinued as of 1 February 2026, as it has become redundant. Indeed, the EPO has met — and has committed to continuing to meet — these timelines irrespective of whether an accelerated procedure is requested.
Maintaining the “PACE pace” (forgive the pun), however, requires strict compliance: any requests for time extension will result in the patent application being definitively excluded from the programme. The accelerated procedure is instead suspended if renewal fees are not paid within the standard deadlines.
The PACE request can be submitted only once per application.
Furthermore, access to the programme is not unconditional. The EPO guarantees accelerated processing only insofar as it is compatible with the workload of the individual examining divisions; in particularly “congested” technical fields, limitations may apply. In addition, to prevent abuse, applicants requesting PACE for an entire patent portfolio may be invited by the EPO to make a selection, limiting requests to those cases they are most interested in.
If your Clients would like to explore the possibility of accelerating prosecution of their patent applications through the PACE programme, please do not hesitate to contact our consultants, who will be pleased to discuss the matter with you in greater detail and provide tailored advice.