Friday, July 01, 2016 T 2365/11: arguments to save your patent that fail without proof

In this opposition appeal the patent proprietor tried some interesting procedure related arguments to save his patent. 
A first line of arguments was based on the fact that in a specific letter another opponent was mentioned than the person who filed the opposition. According to the proprietor: "Since the 'true' opponent was therefore not known, and in any case the original opponent had no legal capacity, this constituted a circumvention of law by abuse of due process according to G3/97, rendering the opposition inadmissible." A second line of arguments was that replacing the chairman of the Opposition Division one day before the oral proceedings resulted in a procedural violation. 
The proprietor was not very successful with these arguments. It seems that the problem was that the proprietor could not prove what he argued - at least he did not provide enough evidence and arguments to show that there was a real circumvention of law and that the new chairman was not well-prepared for the oral proceedings.