Friday, September 04, 2015 T 1436/12 Change of a referenced document

In this appeal following a refusal by the examining division, the Board did not allow a change of reference to a document incorporated by reference as a correction or as an amendment. The applicant had in the application made a reference to a US application identified by the internal patent attorney docket number (the US application number was not yet known). The applicant requested in appeal proceedings to change the reference to a PCT application which claimed priority from the US application. The Board examined the matter thoroughly. One consideration for not allowing the change was that at the moment of filing the European application the US files was not public; so it could not be verified based on the attorney docket number, which was in the US file, which applications were involved.