Montenegro on its way to become 39th EPC Contracting State on 1 October 2022

The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced that Montenegro will become the next Member State of the European Patent Organisation. The European state’s ascension to the Organisation will take effect on 1 October of this year.

From 2010, Montenegro has been an Extension State of the EPO. If a country is an Extension State, if you request the extension and pay the extension fee in time, you can have European patent applications and patents extended to these countries. After Montenegro becomes a Member State, it will not be necessary to request the extension and pay the extension fee.

This will be possible for all the European and international applications filed from October 1 October 2022. For this reason, it might be useful to postpone the patent filing of these applications. Albania and Serbia were the last countries to join the Organization as members. The Organisation started with seven founding states in 1977.

Currently, the contracting states are Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom.

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