EPO - Discussion forums

Last night (U.S. eastern daylight time) I received the following error when my client app was attempting to obtain an access token. I had not made any changes to the script that has been working successfully for over a year. That script was now returning the following error message:

error -Error with certificate at depth: 1 issuer = /OU=GlobalSign Root CA - R2/O=GlobalSign/CN=GlobalSign subject = /C=BE/O=GlobalSign nv-sa/CN=GlobalSign Extended Validation CA - SHA256 - G2 err 7:certificate signature failure

Early this morning (7:30 a.m. US eastern daylight time), the script worked properly and I received the access token. Now once again in early evening (6:00 p.m.) the above error is being returned.

Does anyone have an idea of what could be happening?

Hi,

It looks like you had cached/hard coded details of the legacy certificate in your code which has resulted in failures to connect successfully to OPS.

We have indeed migrated to the new EV certificate but that is a routine refresh of certificates which in our case happens every 12 months; the expiry date is visible in every certificate.

Our programmers’ advice is that the client code should be adapted to handle the transition seamlessly. Making the change on your end will avoid having same issue in 12 months’ time again. We had one other user reporting about this yesterday so I presume you have same issue.

If not, please send us email (email available on OPS pages or in emails at the time of your registration) with your data and error and we will have a look at your account and reply to you directly.

Regards,

OPS support

Thank you for your response. I am sending a more detailed description, including my code for obtaining the access token

Very good please send it all.
Just for info, we did not receive anything untill now.

Regards,

OPS support

I sent my response to patentdata@epo.org on June 26, but it was probably after working hours in Europe.

In the meantime, I realized that the "certificate" you were referring to is not something that I have on my end. Your suggestion that I could somehow see its expiration date made me feel that the certificate was something EPO had sent me when I registered. Once I knew that you were referring to the EPO's SSL certificate, I tried a workaround by which I instruct my app to NOT verify your new "EV" SSL certificate when it makes an HTTPS call. That worked! I will have to discuss with my IDE supplier why your change to the EV certificate caused my problem. For over a year my app worked fine with your previous type of SSL certificate, but now it does not.

If you find my e-mail and have any further comments based on its contents, please let me know. Thanks very much for your help with this matter.

Regards,

Bruce Pokras