Oral proceedings before the Receiving Section, the Examining Divisions and the Legal Division are not public.

Oral proceedings, including delivery of the decision (see III, 9), are public before the Opposition Divisions insofar as the Opposition Division does not decide otherwise in cases where admission of the public could have serious and unjustified disadvantages, in particular for a party to the proceedings. This could, for example, be the case if one of the parties wishes to give information about sales figures or other commercial secrets in support of his case. Generally, the public will only be excluded whilst such information is being given.