What if things go wrong?

The service will be designed to be very reliable and to cope with short periods where the systems of any Office become unavailable. However, participating OSF will have to provide safeguards for applicants to protect their rights in cases where a document cannot in practice be retrieved for some reason.

In the case of the Intellectual Property Office the document must be available to the comptroller before the end of the relevant period, in accordance with rule 8(4)(b). If a document cannot be retrieved for technical reasons beyond the control of the applicant, WIPO will issue a certificate to that effect to the Intellectual Property Office. If the certificate shows that the document was available to the Intellectual Property Office before the end of the relevant period, it will be retrieved as soon as the technical problems have been resolved without any further action required by the applicant.

However, in the extremely unlikely event that the document ultimately cannot be retrieved from PDAS, the applicant may be required to furnish a paper copy of the priority document in accordance with rule 8(2). If the priority document cannot be furnished before the end of the relevant period, the period can be extended in accordance with rule 108. The Intellectual Property Office will inform the applicant that the priority document cannot be retrieved from PDAS within 30 days of requesting the document from WIPO, ensuring the applicant is informed in time to extend the period under rule 108 if necessary.