A panel of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO rejected a request to replace the EBA chairman for suspected partiality. The reasons for allowing such a request in decision R19/12 had since been removed because the chairman had discontinued all his managerial activities in the senior management committees of the EPO. Under…
During examination poor quality drawings had been replaced by drawings that made more details visible. The opponent argued that replacement of these drawings by the original drawings, to overcome Article 123(2) objections, extended the scope of protection (Article 123(3)). The board concluded that the skilled person remained clearly able to determine what was protected, because…
A panel of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the EPO rejected a request to replace the EBA chairman for suspected partiality. The reasons for allowing such a request in decision R19/12 had since been removed because the chairman had discontinued all his managerial activities in the senior management committees of the EPO. Under…
The Board of Appeal used its discretionary power to declare inadmissible an appeal based on the claims as granted after the proprietor had only defended amended claims before the opposition division. Even if this should not be construed as abandonment of the claims as granted, the request should not be admitted for reasons of procedural…
The Board vacated reversed a decision that deletion of drawings amounted to an extension of protection. The opposition Opposition division Division had revoked the patent with the argument that the amendment generally had an impact on the extent of protection conferred by the European patent because the drawings would be used to resolve ambiguities in…
The Board observed that it could not be understood that the “technical relevance” criterion, proposed by another board in T 1906/11 for judging extension of subject matter, defines a new standard for judging amendments with respect to Article 123(2) in the case of intermediate generalizations. Instead, the Board had to decide whether the technical information…
The Board of Appeal accepted that filing of a criminal complaint for patent infringement could meet the EPC condition of Art. 105 EPC, for intervention that ‘proceedings for infringement´ have been instituted. In the present case, the licensee of the patent raised a criminal complaint (‘Privatanklage’ under Austrian law), requesting a court to institute criminal…
The Board of Appeal ruled that color figures contained in the application when filed could be used as a basis for amendments. The board had to deal with the problem that no original copy of the color figures was available to the board. Therefore, the board considered it appropriate to compare sets of copies of…
In an appeal against a decision by the Opposition Division to maintain the patent in amended form, the Board ordered the representative of the opponent to file an authorization. The representative did not do so in due time, but indicated that the opponent would take no further action. The Board held that the legal fiction…
The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) revoked a decision by the Technical Board of Appeal because it failed to decide on a request to admit an expert report (rule 104b EPC2000). The petition for review was admissible in spite of the fact that the appellant failed to raise an objection during oral proceedings before the…
