Following the accession of the Republic of Serbia to the European Patent Convention (EPC) on 1 October 2010, patent attorneys from the Republic of Serbia have the opportunity to acquire the right to act as professional attorneys before the European Patent Office (EPO) and to be included in the list of professional attorneys maintained for that purpose by the EPO.
Only professional representatives whose names appear on the above-mentioned list may act as representatives in procedures before the EPO. In order to be included on this list, professional representatives must meet certain conditions, including having passed the European qualifying examination (EQE).
The Candidate Support Program (CSP) was established to support Member States with low overall number of professional representatives and low number of female professional representatives, by providing assistance to selected candidates in their preparation for the EQE examination. This assistance includes financial support and training for the preparation of all the parts of the EQE examination, namely the Preparatory Paper F and the Main Examination Papers M1, M2, M3 and M4. The program follows the EQE examination schedule and is delivered in different phases over three consecutive years.
Therefore, we invite all the interested candidates to apply for the Candidate Support Program (CSP) for preparation of the European Qualifying Examination (EQE) not later than 15 August 2025. Please note that applications must be confirmed by the EPO Examination Secretariat, for Paper F or Tests M1 and M2.
We also draw attention of the interested candidates to the fact that the application is to be submitted directly to the EPO, but information about the submitted application with all supporting documents should be immediately sent to the Intellectual Property Office by emails (marko.ilijic@zis.gov.rs and tatjana.stevanovic@zis.gov.rs). The Intellectual Property Office reviews all the applications to see which of the candidates meet the requirements. After that, the Intellectual Property Office informs the EPO about the list of the candidates it supports.
The online application form is available at the following link and will be open until 15 August. More information about the conditions of the Program, as well as about the support measures, can be found in the following document, as well as on the EPO website.
For any question and information feel free to contact Marko Ilijić (email: marko.ilijic@zis.gov.rs, phone: +381112025975) or Tatjana Stevanović (email: tatjana.stevanovic@zis.gov.rs, phone: +381112025951).