We would like to draw your attention to some changes concerning the means of communications with the Office, which will enter into force as of 1 March 2021.

Kindly be reminded of the Decision No EX-20-9 of the Executive Director of the Office of 3 November on communication by electronic means. In particular, please note that:

- fax will no longer be offered and used as a mean of communication in procedures before the Office.
- in the event of a malfunction during an electronic transmission via the e-operation or e-filing tool in the User Area, the transmission must be resubmitted via one of the other accepted means of communication or back-up solutions such as an upload solution in the Communications section of the User Area or a file-sharing solution outside the User Area.

To learn more, please consult the Decision in full. In case of any problem, EUIPO first line should be contacted for support and recommending the best solution in any given circumstance.

We would also like to draw your attention to another recent Decision No EX-20-10 of the Executive Director of the Office of 22 December 2020 on technical specifications for annexes submitted on data carriers. In particular, kindly note that:

- the Office accepts the following data carriers: small portable storage drives such as USB flash drives, pen drives or similar memory units. The Office does not accept external hard drives, memory cards, CD ROMs, DVDs, other optical discs or magnetic data carriers of any kind. Art.1 (1) and (2) of the Decision.
- the maximum size of each individual annex saved on the data carrier is restricted to 20 MB. To learn more, please read the Decision in full.

Kindly note that the 20 MB restriction only affects the individual annex and not the overall size of all annexes. In case the individual annex exceeds 20 MB, it could be split in different annexes.

As these Decisions will introduce some changes in the way of communicating with the EUIPO, if you are an ECTA Member and would like to share your opinion with us in this regard, kindly fill in a short survey in the Private Site/New Messages.

Many thanks for taking note of this information.