1.2. Limits of the legitimate expectations principle

In T 590/18 of 4 July 2018 the board held that a debit order filed on paper (EPO Form 1010) after 1 December 2017 could at most be accepted as a valid payment of the appeal fee if the appellant could successfully claim to have seen still current information clearly indicating the option of paying this way on the EPO website after the entry into force of the change to fee payment methods, to have been entitled to entertain a legitimate expectation as to that information's accuracy, and indeed to have acted in reliance on it. Finding a PDF version of a brochure published before the change's entry into force was not sufficient to establish such a legitimate expectation, especially when the appellant had anyway known about the change.