European patent applications and international (PCT) applications may be filed with the EPO in electronic form either online or on electronic data carriers (see the Decision of the President dated 29 October 2002, OJ 11/2002, 543). At present, the sole data carrier permitted is CD-R as per IS 9660 (see the Notice from the EPO dated 29 October 2002 concerning the electronic filing of patent applications and other documents, OJ 11/2002, 545). Documents making up a European or an international patent application in electronic form must be prepared using either the epoline® Online Filing software or the PaTrAS software both of , which includes the Request for Grant Form, unless the use of other software is permitted (see mentioned Decision of the President, the above-mentioned Notice dated 29 October 2002, point 5.1, OJ 11/2002, 543 and 545 and the Notice from the EPO dated 19 March 2004, OJ 5/2004, 270), unless the use of other sofware is permitted .

Other documents may also be be filed electronically in the grant procedings (see the Notice from the EPO dated 3 December 2003, OJ 12/2003, 609). For the special case of the electronic filing of priority documents issued by the USPTO on or after 30 July 2004, see III, 6.7

No confirmation on paper is required for documents thus filed in electronic form (see -mentioned Decision of the President).

European patent applications may also be filed in electronic form with the competent national authorities of those Contracting States which so permit, namely - at present - Finland (FI), France (FR), Germany, using the PaTrAS software (see the above-mentioned Notice dated 19 March 2004), Spain (ES) and the United Kingdom (UK).