EPO Appeal Proceedings: T0716/17 Fined for excessive renumbering of auxiliary requests
We all know that the procedural laws in the appeal stage of EPO proceedings are an art of its itself, and it seems to me that more and more cases are decided on procedural aspets and not on the merits of the case. You could see it positive and state that thus it doesn't really matter whether the cases is heard face-to-face or in the form of a videoconference.
The decision T0716/17 (https://register.epo.org/application?documentId=E55SA0TS9296DSU&number=EP06425407&lng=de&npl=false) gives us more food for thougths at least for 2 aspects:
- "Excessive renumbering":
The Board held that reordering of pending requests anounts to an amendment of the case - which need justification according to Article 13(2) RBPA 2020. The Board therefore did not admit auxiliary requests for this reason.
2. Appeal stage needs its own substantiation of auxiliary requests:
The Board confirmed the principle that the fact that a AR has been part of the first instance proceedings is no guarantee that it is also admitted part of the Appeal proceedings. Rather, each AR of the appeal stage has to be substantiated when (re-)introducing it in the appeal file.
Examiner at European Patent Office
3 年“As a matter of fact, requests have to be substantiated in appeal, Art. 12(2),(4) RPBA. Whether they were sufficiently substantiated before the department of first instance is of no relevance” excellent ??! They love copy-paste apparently. That sounds like a “lèse-majesté” crime. To be fair they allowed six-reorderings of the auxiliary requests. I envy BoA’s creative imagination...