Wednesday, March 07, 2018 T 0611/15 - No pain, no gain

In this opposition appeal, the Proprietor appealed the decision of the Opposition Division to maintain the patent in amended form. The joint opponents also appealed this decision, but did not attend oral proceedings. Also party to the appeal proceedings were two assumed infringers, in the capacity of interveners.

The Proprietor requested that the patent be maintained as granted (main request), auxiliarily that the decision under appeal be set aside and the patent be maintained in amended form on the basis of the first auxiliary request filed in during first instance proceedings, or on the basis of the request found allowable by the Opposition Division (second auxiliary request). The Proprietor further requested that the patent be maintained on the basis of the claims of one of the third to fifth auxiliary requests filed during the oral proceedings.

However, during the oral proceedings the Interveners submitted that it is evident from the contested decision and the minutes of the oral proceedings before the Opposition Division that the Proprietor had withdrawn the main request and first auxiliary request, maintaining the second auxiliary request as the sole request. As the contested decision was favourable in respect of this sole request, the Proprietor was not adversely affected by the decision and consequently the Proprietor's appeal is to be rejected as inadmissible, Article 107 EPC and Rule 101(1) EPC. Furthermore, as the Proprietor's appeal is not admissible, the main and first auxiliary requests submitted in the appeal proceedings are not admissible in view of the principle of reformatio in peius. 

The Interveners further argued that in each of the third to fifth auxiliary requests the respective claim 1 prima facie gave rise to new clarity objections under Article 84 EPC which neither they nor the Board could reasonably be expected to deal with without adjournment of the oral proceedings.

The Board essentially went along with the Interveners' submissions. As a result, during the oral proceedings the proprietor was merely able to defend his second auxiliary request - i.e., the request found allowable by the Opposition Division.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016 T 399/13 - No why, so inadmissible

When filing the appeal against the decision from the Opposition Division, the appellant filed three new sets of amended claims and arguments as to their allowability, but did not give a reasoning why the appealed decision was wrong. Without this necessary link between the contested decision and the statement of grounds, the appeal was held inadmissible by the Board.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 T 1649/10 - Closest prior art switching

The Opposition division denied patentability of the Main Request based on a document D10 as the closest prior art and then the teaching of D4 that suggested the use of the missing feature (a scatterer). The patent was maintained in amended form based on an auxiliary request. The opponent (appellant I) and the proprietor (appellant II) appealed. The Board Appeal decided that the appeal of appellant II was inadmissible because in the statements of grounds it was argued that there was inventive step when taking D4 as the closest prior art in view of D10. The Board decided that such simple 'turning around' of the closest prior art is not allowed. Importantly, appellant II did not provide arguments why D4 should be considered as the closest prior art in the statements of grounds, which would have made the appeal admissible. The end result was that appellant II was 'out of the game' and could not put forward any new arguments and new auxiliary requests. Even worse: the patent was revoked, while before the appeal procedure there was at least an auxiliary request that was held allowable. The lesson is: Even if you think that the earlier selected closest prior art is in your eyes not the closest prior art, at least argue WHY you think that is, not simply start from the closest prior art that you prefer.  

Summary of Facts and Submissions

I. The appeals lie from the interlocutory decision of the opposition division to maintain European patent No. 1 378 265 in an amended form. The decision was dispatched on 16 June 2010.

[...]

II. The opposition, which led to the decision appealed in the present case, was filed against the patent as a whole and based on the ground that the claimed subject-matter was not patentable (Article 100 (a) EPC 1973) because it was not new (Articles 52(1) and 54 EPC 1973) and did not involve an inventive step (Articles 52(1) and 56 EPC 1973).

III. In the "Reasons" for its decision to maintain the patent in amended form, the opposition division held that the subject-matter of claim 1 of the patent as granted did not involve an inventive step in the sense of Article 56 EPC 1973. In the analysis developed by the opposition division according to the problem/solution approach, the opposition division relied on the teaching of document D10 [...] as closet [sic] prior art. Since the sole difference between the claimed subject-matter and document D10 resided, in the opposition division's view, in the presence of a scatterer, the problem solved by the invention was to enlarge the irradiation beam and consequently to increase the speed of treatment. According to the opposition division, the skilled person would have found a solution to the problem of enlargement of the charged particle beam in document D4 [...].

The opposition division decided to maintain the patent as amended according to the first auxiliary request then pending. The objective problem of reducing the loss of particles at the edges of the treatment region, defined with regard to document D10 as closest prior art, was not addressed in D4.