18/12/2009 Zacco new service provider for patent annuities

To our clients,

This information pertains only to clients and any patents or patent applications that prior to the Albihns and Zacco merger was handled by a Zacco office. The information has no relevance for any patents or patent applications that was handled by Albihns prior to the merger.

Furthermore, this information does not relate to any cases where Zacco today has no responsibility for sending data to your renewal agent and you provide data to the renewal agent by yourself.

In order to keep patents and patent applications alive, a (commonly annual) renewal fee must be paid. Zacco has for some years cooperated with CPA, where Zacco has been responsible for sending data on our clients’ cases to CPA and based on this data CPA has paid the renewal fees. One can say that CPA has been a service provider for Zacco for paying renewal fees on patents.

Zacco has made the decision to end our relationship with CPA as of May 1, 2010. Starting May 1st, Ipendo AB will be Zacco’s new service provider for paying patent renewal fees. This does in effect mean that Zacco will not send any data relevant to renewals due after May 1st 2010 to CPA, including renewals on new cases as well as existing cases. Zacco will instead send data to Ipendo AB and the latter will pay any renewals due after May 1st 2010.

Zacco’s decision to switch sub-supplier is a step in our continuous effort to improve our service offering to our clients. The switch will be favorable to our client by:

• Service and support directly from Zacco.

• Pay-default. The annuities will be paid unless our clients instruct us not to pay; there will not be any reminder fees and no risk for inadvertent loss of patent rights.

• Costs. The new solution can offer competitive prices and for Scandinavian clients there will be no need for international payments.

As CPA’s responsibility for our clients’ renewals stops by the end of April and Zacco through Ipendo resumes the responsibility on May 1st there will not be any gap where no one is responsible for renewing our clients’ patents and patent applications. In fact, you will already in February receive the first notifications for renewals where Ipendo will be responsible for paying the renewal fees.

Zacco will handle the transfer of responsibility from CPA to Ipendo and ensure that no renewals and/or cases are lost in the transfer. The only time you as a client must take action, is if you want CPA or any renewal agent different from Ipendo to handle your patent renewals after May 1st, Zacco must then be explicitly informed. Again, Zacco would like to stress the fact that Zacco will not send any data to CPA or any other renewal agent different than Ipendo after May 1st. All clients who wish to use another renewal agent than Ipendo must take responsibility for sending data to its renewal agent on its own.

If you have any question regarding the switch of renewal agent, please contacts Zacco’s annuity department; annuities.europe@zacco.com