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T 1567/17 – an unclear waiver is no waiver




In this case, the examining division issued a direct refusal after the appellant had rejected the text intended for grant and requested that examination be resumed based on reasoned amendments. The new main claim incorporated an amended feature which, according to appellant’s own statement, “could be omitted if regarded as violating Art. 123(2)”. The examining division indeed regarded the amended feature as a violation, and interpreted the appellant’s statement as an acknowledgement that the amendment could not be unambiguously derived from the description as filed. The appellant was given no opportunity to respond to the division’s opinion on this issue.

The Board held that the direct refusal of the application was in violation of Art. 113(1) EPC, since the appellant’s statement could not be construed as waiving the right to be heard, but merely intimated that a new R. 71(3) communication would have been accepted on the basis of amended claims without the feature in question.

Only an unambiguous statement as to waiving a party's right to be heard is to be interpreted as a waiver of this right.

Catchwords:
The applicant's remark in a response under Rule 71(6) EPC that an amended feature "can also be omitted if regarded as violating Article 123(2) EPC" cannot be construed as waiving its right to be heard and its right to a reasoned decision in case the application were to be refused. Rather, this remark merely intimates that the applicant would accept the issue of a new communication under Rule 71(3) EPC on the basis of the amended set of claims without said feature.

R 4/17 - Four is a party



In the present case, the Opponent appealed the decision of the Opposition Division to maintain the patent as granted. The Board of Appeal sent three registered - but without advice of delivery - communications (notice of appeal; statement of the grounds of appeal; further letter) to the Respondent-Proprietor. In the absence of any response from the Proprietor to these letters, the Board of Appeal considered itself to be in a position to issue a decision revoking the patent without the need to hold oral proceedings. This decision of the Board was sent to the parties under cover of a registered letter with advice of delivery. 

The Proprietor filed a petition for review of the decision, arguing that it had no record of ever having received the first three letters, thus depriving him of his right to be heard.

The Enlarged Board now deals with this petition for review, and finds that in the present case, the Proprietor had, within the meaning of Article 113(1) EPC, no opportunity at all to comment on the grounds for the decision under review. This qualifies as a fundamental violation of his right to be heard.


Catchwords:
In the event of any dispute about whether a letter from the EPO reached the addressee or on which date, it is incumbent on the EPO to establish that the letter has reached its destination or to establish the date on which the letter was delivered to the addressee (Reasons, point 2).

[...] parties must be able to rely on the EPO complying with the relevant provisions of the EPC and, at least for the purposes of Article 113(1) EPC, they and their representatives have no duty to monitor the proceedings themselves by regularly inspecting the electronic file (Reasons, point 4).

In respect of the implausibility of the non-arrival of letters put forward by the Other Party the Enlarged Board considers that it cannot be expected that the Petitioner should prove a negative, that is the nonreceipt of a letter, or provide a plausible explanation for non-receipt (Reasons, point 4). 

T 447/13 - Trivially or seriously ill?

Better send in a doctor's certificate?

In the present case, the professional representative became ill before the scheduled OP, and excused him/herself by a phone call and subsequent letter indicating that he/she had "take[n] ill" while requesting the OP to be rescheduled. The request was refused by the ED for the reasons that the representative referred in his letter only to illness and not to serious illness, and that the request was not accompanied by a substantiated written statement indicating the reasons.

The Board now deals with this matter in appeal, and finds that the ED did not properly exercise its discretion but rather took an unreasonable approach based on a wrong principle.

Catchwords:
For the purposes of deciding whether to grant a request for postponement of oral proceedings on grounds of illness, the reference to "serious illness" in the Guidelines means an illness which is sufficiently serious to prevent the representative travelling to oral proceedings and presenting the case on the appointed day (Reasons, point 5.3).

Where a request for postponement of oral proceedings is refused on the ground that the request was not sufficiently substantiated, it is incumbent upon the Examining Division to explain why it considers the substantiation insufficient. In other words, it should state in clear terms what, in its opinion, should have been submitted or explained, but was not (Reasons, point 6.4).


R 8/16 - A plurality of petition grounds

A petition for review with many grounds...

In opposition proceedings, the patent was upheld with amended claims. During appeal by the proprietor and an opponent, the Board revoked the patent for added subject-matter.

The proprietor-appellant filed a petition for review under Article 112a EPC against the decision of the Board. The petition lists various grounds, as enumerated below.

The EBA discusses the admissability and allowability of these grounds, including whether a counter-argument put forward during oral proceedings also represents a formal objection under Rule 106 EPC (admissibility of ground D), whether the right to be heard is violated if an admission of a request is not reasoned (allowability of ground C), whether the BoA is free to determine the order in which the requests are discussed (allowability of ground C), and why it is needed for the petition to already contain the specific arguments w.r.t. a fundamental violation of Article 113 EPC (rather than those being specified in a later response or during oral proceedings) (allowability of ground D)

Catchwords:
1. Only parties adversely affected by a decision may resort to a procedure under Article 112a EPC. The term 'fundamental violation' in Article 112a(2)(c) EPC also must be read in this light. An alleged violation cannot be fundamental, in the sense of 'intolerable', if it does not cause an adverse effect. (Reasons, point 23).

2. The principle of party disposition expressed in Article 113(2) EPC does not extend so as to permit a party to dictate how and in which order a deciding body of the EPO may examine the subject-matter before it. The only obligation on the EPO is not to overlook any still pending request in the final decision. A Board has no particular duty to give reasons why it chose to proceed as it did (Reasons, point 25).

3. A Board has no obligation to peruse the whole file of the first instance proceedings. It is the duty of the parties to raise issues again in the appeal proceedings, to the extent necessary, as stipulated by Articles 12(1) and (2) RPBA: "Appeal proceedings shall be based on [the submissions of the parties filed in the appeal proceedings, which] ... should specify expressly all the facts, arguments and evidence relied on" (Reasons, point 38).

The petition grounds:
XI. Right to be heard violations, Art. 112a(2)(c) and 113 EPC

A. The written decision of the Board contained no reasons why the claims as upheld by the Opposition Division were not allowable, thus not permitting the petitioner to understand why the decision under appeal was reversed.

B. The Board's decision did not explain what happened to the earlier withdrawn requests, but only referred to the petitioner's final requests that it confirmed at the end of the oral proceedings.

C. The decision contained no reasons why the main request was admitted, and why this decision was only made after the decision not to admit the later withdrawn auxiliary requests. This lack of reasons in the decision violated the petitioner's right to be heard, because arguments need not only be heard, but also must be acknowledged in a decision of the EPO.

D. The Board did not consider the main arguments of the petitioner, why the "only two bearing" feature does not add subject-matter. (...). The petitioner also submitted that the arguments not mentioned could well have changed the outcome of the decision.

XII. Fundamental procedural defect, Art. 112a(2)(d) EPC

E. The Board did not decide on a request pursuant to Rule 104(b) EPC, in that the main request was discussed and decided on only after a discussion and decision on the claims as upheld. In this respect, the petitioner raised an objection under Rule 106 EPC.

XIV. Further procedural violations

F. The petitioner was led into the inescapable trap of Article 123(2)/(3) EPC by the Examining Division, i.e. the European Patent Organisation itself provoked the error.

G. The petitioner lost its patent on a 'formalistic issue', against the spirit of Article 4(3) EPC, and after having spent considerable sums.

H. The considerations underlying petition grounds F and G were not taken into account by the Board, when revoking the patent, in full knowledge of pending parallel infringement actions.