5.1 Admissibility of the protest as checked by the formalities officer 

Before initiating the protest procedure the formal admissibility of the protest in the sense of Rule 68.3(c) (Chapter II) must be checked.

To be admissible the protest should satisfy the following requirements:

(a)The applicant must have paid the prescribed protest fee (Rule 68.3(e)), and

(b)The payment under protest must be accompanied by a reasoned statement, i.e. the reasoned statement should have been filed with the payment or at the latest within the time limit set in Form 405 (Chapter II).

The reasoned statement must comply with Rule 68.3(c); i.e. applicants should argue why the international application complies with the requirement of unity of invention or why the amount of the required additional fee is excessive. In the protest applicants should question the number of additional examination fees that they have been invited to pay, and not the amount of a single additional fee.

The payment of the protest fee and the filing of a purported reasoned statement are assessed by specially trained formalities officers. If the formalities officer finds any deficiencies, the applicant is informed of them by way of Form 420 or Form 424. Any substantive analysis is made by the Review Panel when assessing the justification of the protest.