T 1648/17 - repeated non-attendance at oral proceedings
This appeal was lodged against a decision of the examining division refusing the European patent application in suit on the ground that claim 1 and 8 lacked an inventive step (Art. 56 EPC).
In the statements of the grounds of appeal, the appellant requested that the decision under appeal be set aside and that a patent be granted on the basis of the claims of two new requests never presented during first instance examination proceedings. The two new requests were based on an additional feature derived from the description and not from the claims as originally filed. This would have meant that the BoA would have needed to remit the case to the Examining Division for a new search thereby going beyond the scope of appeal proceedings that are primarily concerned with examining the contested decision rather than to continue examination (G 10/93). The applicant/appellant did not attend the Oral proceedings both during examination and during appeal proceedings reason for which the BoA believes that the applicant did not want to submit any new request from that point in examination. Therefore the BoA did not admit the requests in appeal (Art. 12(4) RPBA) and dismissed the appeal.
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