As we are concerned about the health and well-being of our employees, associates and clients, our firm continues to strictly follow the government recommendations regarding organization of work in the existing COVID-19 conditions. The number of persons that are present at our office every day is still limited but we remain fully operational in our clients’ matters while working online.
On May 16, 2020 new regulations entered into force in Poland according to which the procedural deadlines / time-limits in the court and administrative proceedings that were withheld or suspended on the basis of the previous special Act of March 31, 2020 (see our communication of April 8, 2020) start or continue running after seven days after the above date.
The above principle applies to all deadlines / time-limits before courts and public administration offices, including the Polish Patent Office, except for deadlines for filing trademark oppositions and deadlines for validation / re-validation of European patents in Poland. Here, the regulations of the special Act of March 31, 2020 remain in force. According to said regulations, in the period between March 8, 2020 and June 30, 2020 these deadlines / time-limits are withheld (if not started yet) or shall be treated as interrupted (if already started); they will restart on July 1, 2020 and run anew. Importantly, all actions taken within the original deadlines / time-limits during the interruption of these deadlines / time-limits shall be treated as valid and fully effective.
Irrespective of the above solutions, our firm is committed to provide its IP related services with no interruption and to meet all the original official deadlines without any need of making use of said extraordinary measures. Consequently, if possible, we recommend our clients to take all actions within the regular deadlines / time-limits, without relying on the above-mentioned extraordinary measures resulting from the situation caused by COVID-19.