Tuesday, September 01, 2020 T 2214/15 - Ordinary, not exceptional

According to Article 13(2) of the revised Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal (RPBA 2020), any amendment to a party’s appeal case made after notification of a summons to oral proceedings (or after a deadline set by the Board with an express invitation to file observations) shall, in principle, not be taken into account unless there are exceptional circumstances, which have been justified with cogent reasons by the party concerned. The basic principle of this third level of the new "convergent approach" applicable in EPO appeal proceedings is that, at this stage of the appeal proceedings, amendments to a party’s appeal case are not to be taken into consideration. Only if a party can present compelling reasons which justify clearly why the circumstances leading to the amendment are indeed exceptional in the particular case. For example, if a party submits that the Board raised an objection for the first time, it must explain precisely why this objection is new and does not fall under objections previously raised by the Board (or a party). The Board may decide to admit the amendment in the exercise of its discretion. 

In the present examination appeal case, the appellant had filed Auxiliary Request 2 after notification of the summons to oral proceedings. During oral proceedings, the appellant argued that this late-filed request should be admitted, as the Board had raised a number of new issues in the summons to which auxiliary request 2 represented a good faith reaction. Indeed, the Board accepted that in the present case this represented exceptional circumstances within the meaning of Article 13(2) RPBA 2020.
Unfortunately, the Board found that Auxiliary Request 2 does not comply with Articles 84 and 123(2). 

Auxiliary Request 3 filed subsequently during oral proceedings was however not admitted. While the appellant asserted that a further request should be admitted because the Board had raised new objections in connection with the second auxiliary request that the appellant could not have been expected to anticipate, the Board was not persuaded by these arguments. According to the Board, the topics of discussion in view of auxiliary request 2 did not differ in substance from those identified in the summons; the identification of newly introduced problems when attempting to solve issues discussed in the procedure up to that point is rather to be seen as the ordinary development of the discussion, rather than an exceptional circumstance justifying the admittance of a further auxiliary request. In the view of the Board, if such newly introduced problems would represent exceptional circumstances, this would imply that the appellant would have to be given repeated opportunity to file amended claims until no new problems were introduced. Such a procedure could only be characterised as a continuation of the first-instance examination proceedings and would thus be at odds with the primary object of the appeal proceedings of a judicial review of the impugned decision.

Catchword
If amendments intended to overcome objections of lack of support and lack of clarity raised in the summons give rise to further objections concerning clarity or added subject-matter, pointing out these further objections does not represent exceptional circumstances within the meaning of Article 13(2) RPBA 2020, but rather an ordinary development of the discussion which does not go beyond the framework of the initial objection. See reasons 5.3 and 5.4.

Tuesday, January 14, 2020 T 1711/16 - Prima facie (ir)relevance is not always relevant

The admittance of evidence into appeal proceedings is left to the discretionary powers of the Board of Appeal (Article 12(4) RPBA). It is established case law (cf. G 7/93) that Boards of Appeal should only overturn discretionary decisions of the department of first instance if it is concluded that the department of first instance exercised its discretion according to the wrong principles, or without taking into account the right principles or in an unreasonable way.

In the present appeal case, prior art documents D6 and D7 were submitted by the opponent in response to concerns regarding the nature of a certain additive "Disperbyk-111", as expressed by the Opposition Division in its preliminary opinion accompanying summons for oral proceedings. Documents D6 and D7 were filed within the final date for making submissions set in this communication. The Opposition Division considered D6 and D7 late filed and prima facie not constituting evidence regarding the nature of "Disperbyk-111"; accordingly, the Division did not admit D6 and D7 into the proceedings.

The Board however found that D6 and D7 were timely submitted by the opponent in a fair attempt to dispel doubts about the meaning of "Disperbyk-111" voiced by the Opposition Division. As such, the "prima facie relevance" (or lack thereof) in providing convincing evidence of the identity of "Disperbyk-111" was in this case irrelevant, as the decisive point is rather whether these documents and the submissions made in their respect deal with that issue and were timely submitted. Consequently, the decision of the first instance department not to admit D6 and D7 into the proceedings was overturned.

The Board did not admit the second to nineteenth auxiliary requests of the proprietor - already filed during first instance proceedings - to the proceedings for lack of proper substantiation.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019 T 341/15 - Late documents and late requests in first and second instance

In the present case, the Opposition Division admitted into the proceedings late-filed documents D9 and D14 and held that claim 1 of the then main request (patent as granted) and of the then first to sixth auxiliary requests did not involve inventive step pursuant to Article 56 EPC starting from D9 as closest prior art in combination with the teaching of D14. The appellant (proprietor) holds the view that they should not have been admitted into the proceedings similarly to other documents which had not been admitted by the Opposition Division. At the oral proceedings before the Board the appellant further added that D9 only concerns the preamble of claim 1 of the main request so that it would not be relevant to the invention. The Board discussed that, according to the established case law a Board of appeal should only overrule the way in which a department of first instance has exercised its discretion if it concludes that it has done so according to the wrong principles, or without taking into account the right principles, or in an unreasonable way, and has thus exceeded the proper limits of its discretion. When considering their admission into the proceedings, the Opposition Division applied the correct criterion of prima facie relevance. In this respect the Board follows the respondent's (opponent's) view that there is no legal basis or available case law according to which some circumstances would justify that only novelty, i.e. not inventive step, should be considered for the criterion of prima facie relevance.

Monday, November 19, 2018 T 839/14 - Fresh ground before opposition division

Fresh ground

In the written submissions before oral proceedings in first instance opposition, the opponent argued for the first time that the granted patent contained added subject matter. The opposition division refused to allow the new grounds to be added in the proceedings,as it didn't consider it to be prima facie relevant. The decision does contain argumentation though, why the division did not consider there to be added subject matter. The board concurs with the decision not to allow the new ground. Accordingly, the argumentation regarding the added matter which is in the opposition divisions decision is not reviewed by the Board. 

Friday, August 10, 2018 J 4/17 - No resumption of proceedings after stay of 7 years

After the EPO send out an intention to grant in the patent application, entitlement proceedings against the patent were started before the District Court of The Hague (Article 61 proceedings). As a result the application was stayed at the EPO, starting at 28 March 2011. Proceedings are still pending and oral proceedings in the court  case are scheduled for September 2018.  

During the stay the applicant and a further party repeatedly asked for resumption of the grant proceedings under Rule 14(3). Resumption was granted by the legal division, which appeal is the subject of this case.

The board concluded that the legal division correctly exercised its discretionary powers to lift the stay. However, starting at reasons 5 there is a twist in the tale to the benefit of the appellants. 

This decision is one of a series of identical decisions taken in the parent application and its divisionals.  The board provided the following catch words:

Rule 14(3) EPC is silent on the reasons for setting a date for resumption of the proceedings for grant. It is thus to be concluded that the legislator let it to practice and jurisprudence to define the circumstances that justify setting a date for resumption on a discretionary basis.

Resumption of the proceedings is not limited to cases involving misuse or delaying tactics. The possibility that the EPO sets a date for resumption upon staying the proceedings for grant hints towards a broader construction.

However an applicant cannot justify its request for resumption based on the length of the entitlement proceedings where this duration has been significantly caused by the applicant's procedural conduct.