In a press release dated February 22, 2021, the European Patent Office indicates several changes made to Rules 19 and 143 EPC relating to the designation of inventors, taking into account the requirements of the GDPR and simplifying processing.
In particular, it is no longer required that applicants indicate the full address of the inventor, but only the country and place of his residence. As a result, inventors will no longer be informed directly by the EPO of their designation in the patent application. This also alleviates processing in the event of a change of address of the latter, which led us to return to the applicant, at the request of the EPO (Rule 19 EPC).
Furthermore, even once they have been communicated, the full addresses of inventors will no longer be published in the European Patent Register (Rule 143 EPC).
These changes to Rules 19 and 143 EPC come into force on April 1, 2021 and November 1, 2021, respectively.
You will find the full press release from the European Patent Office at the following link: https://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/official-journal/2021/02/a12.html
However, at present, the communication of the personal address of the inventors remains required by the INPI for the filing of French patent applications or French utility certificates.